“I’m open to reading the data. If there’s a major change of conditions, I haven’t made up my mind for what should happen in September,” he said in an interview with Yahoo! Finance.
He added “nothing is off the table.”
The Fed hiked interest rates last Wednesday for the 11th time since March 2022, marking a 22-year high.
While he remains undecided on another interest rate hike, Goolsbee said the Fed is on the “golden path” to bringing inflation down “without causing a major recession.”
“That effort to get inflation down, thus far, is working,” he said. “And if we can do that without generating a major recession, that’s a big achievement for the Fed.”
Addressing arguments from some economists that unemployment must rise for inflation to fall, Goolsbee pointed to the past six months as a counterargument.
“I don’t think that the normal rules of a direct tradeoff between unemployment and inflation necessarily have to apply,” Goolsbee said.
“They certainly have not applied in the last six months.”
Although he expressed some concern about a reduction in available credit, Goolsbee said that’s “been the dog that has not been barking,” noting increased deposits and stabilization in the banking sector.
The Hill’s Rachel Scully has more here.
