Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago President Austan Goolsbee:

  • The Fed watches the markets, but they don't drive policy.
  • The question is if the job market will hold, or keep worsening.
  • We need to see more than payrolls and more than one month.
  • We are getting back to more normal conditions in the US economy
  • Policy is tight
  • Whatever the Fed does, someone is going to be unhappy
  • All the Fed can do is lay out the criteria for rates to go down, or stay the same, or go up
  • We've been clear about the reaction function,. we are not in the business of politics

Goolsbee spoke earlier this week:

Nothing market moving in his comments here.

Fed's Goolsbee
Fed's Goolsbee