Former Dallas Federal Reserve President Robert Kaplan spoke with US media (CNBC) on Tuesday.
- “One of the reasons we got into this inflationary problem is the Fed stayed way too accommodative for too long, even as the economy was improving, and I don’t think it wants to make the same mistake on the flip side, where it stays too restrictive,”
- ” As the economy and inflation softened. It doesn’t want to make the opposite mistake either.”
Kaplan is well-placed to criticize the FOMC for being slow to hike, “way too accommodative for too long”. Before he was booted from this job for questionable personal trading moves while in his role as a very senior official, he was a lone voice warning about dangerously rising inflation when all his colleagues were parroting the ‘transitory’ line that proved so costly in delaying the start of the Fed’s rate hike cycle.
Having said that, he seems to have done a bit of a flip himself from just two weeks ago:
Print out the above and stick it to the fridge, Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) dates for the year ahead.