Is Fed’s Lockhart Growing More Hawkish?

The Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) has just in the past week dialed down on its language and forecasts for rate hikes and gross domestic product (GDP) growth in the United States. So why are other Fed regional presidents out speaking with a more hawkish tone within a week of the formal dovish FOMC?

Atlanta Fed President and CEO Dennis Lockhart spoke on March 21 to the Rotary Club of Savannah. In this speech, he discussed the FOMC’s recent policy decision and his outlook for 2016, but he also sounded a bit more hawkish here.

Lockhart specified that he supported the FOMC’s March 16 decision to hold rates steady. Still, he also said that he believes there is sufficient economic momentum to justify a further rate hike at one of the coming meetings.

Lockhart telegraphed that the economy is on a track that should produce moderate growth in 2016. That moderate growth is 2.0% to 2.5% in GDP. He also believes that the FOMC’s inflation objective of 2.0% is achievable in the medium term.

The outlook for 2016 and 2017 swings on the question of whether domestic demand will hold up. Beyond that near-term issue, a longer-term structural factor to consider is the aging population distribution, which is expected to present challenges to achieving vigorous growth in future years.

Lockhart’s headlines sounded a bit more hawkish than the actual speech summary. He did specify that monetary policy remains on a gradual path of rate increases, and that decisions on interest rate policies will be data-dependent.

An admission was made that international markets did matter. Despite continuing economic progress, the Committee cited recent global economic and financial developments as a reason for its decision.

LOCKHART’s FULL SPEECH