While the road to hell is paved with good intentions, it appears that the “golden path” to a soft landing (which by way of reminder is a “triumph of hope over experience”, if you ask Mr. Summers) is paved with rate cuts. In an interview earlier this week, the Chicago Fed president Austan Goolsbee cast another vote in favor of “adjustment cuts”, saying that “You risk the golden path if you are going to be as restrictive as we are now”. Meanwhile, Jerome Powell was quick to assure the audience during his latest interview that “today I am not going to be sending any signals, one way or the other on any particular meeting” as far as rate cuts are concerned. However, that did not prevent the Chair from referring to ol’ reliable of monetary policy, “long and variable lags”, to explain why, “if you wait until inflation gets all the way down to 2%, you’ve probably waited too long”.
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