-Federal Reserve policymakers are increasingly confident that inflation is cooling enough to allow interest-rate cuts ahead, and they will take their cues on the size and timing of those rate cuts not from stock-market turmoil but from the economic data.
"It's hard to make the case that something has just happened that is monumental on the equity side," Richmond Federal Reserve Bank President Thomas Barkin said on Thursday, noting major U.S. stock-market indices are still up from the start of the year. "I think you've got some time in a healthy economy to figure out whether this is an economy that's gently moving into a normalizing state that will allow you to, in a steady deliberate way, normalize rates or ... is this one where you really do have to lean into it."
On that score, he said, recent"encouraging" data showing inflation around 2.5% gives him more confidence inflation is headed to the Fed's 2% goal. "With the tremendous shocks that the economy has endured so far this decade, I would not want to assume any particular path or endpoint for the policy rate," he said.