Jeffrey Lacker, President of the Richmond Federal Reserve, is out with what are becoming more and more routine comments talking about dissension inside the Federal Reserve. Lacker is consistently the one voice against continued quantitative easing and against setting low rates on what feels like a permanent basis.

Today’s comments come from the Maryland Bankers Association’s Sixth Annual First Friday Economic Outlook Forum taking place in Baltimore, Maryland. Lacker is talking up the risks of inflation and the lack of oomph behind the current economic recovery, although he also sees growth of about 2% for this year.

He was talking about significant uncertainty remaining over the longer run tax and spending plans in America and also how policy uncertainty has been causing delays in both hiring and investment. Mr. Lacker has also said that he sees economic growth around 2% running into the next year although the growth rate could rise be on this year if the restraining factors are eased.

In support of his stance against a perpetual easing mode of the FOMC, Lacker also noted that the prospects for longer-term US growth are quite strong and that household confidence may be gaining.

The rest of Mr. Lacker’s comments can be found here.

As a reminder, Lacker is now not the sole voice against the endless easing measures as we saw in the December FOMC minutes that other voices are rising against endless asset purchases. That might not be the beginning of the end but there are at least some additional growing voices against the free money continuing endlessly.

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