The Federal Reserve has already given enough guidance about the likely path of interest rates at this juncture and doesn’t need to offer more, Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan said.
“I would prefer to wait,” Kaplan said Friday during a Bloomberg Television. “I would prefer to get more clarity on the path of the virus. I think we’ve already given quite a bit of forward guidance.”
The Fed’s quarterly projections “have already said that rates are going to stay low for the rest of this year and all of next year, and I would prefer to show some restraint here,” he said.
Bloomberg News
Officials will publish a fresh update of the projections at the conclusion of their upcoming Sept. 15-16 meeting.
Kaplan’s comments follow the U.S. central bank’s announcement Thursday that it had updated its policy strategy for achieving its employment and inflation goals. Fed officials say they are now trying to keep inflation near 2% on average over time, which means they will likely seek to run inflation above target following periods of below-target inflation.
Minutes of their last policy meeting in July showed that a number of Fed officials thought “providing greater clarity regarding the likely path of the target range for the federal funds rate would be appropriate at some point.”