Federal Reserve Bank of Boston President and CEO Susan Collins believes in the Goldilocks economy: that special, just-right place where the Federal Reserve’s dual mandate of full employment and stable consumer prices happily co-exists.
And she thinks the US economy has a good shot of getting there if it isn’t there already.
“I continue to be that realistic optimist,” Collins told Yahoo Finance in an exclusive interview in Lawrence, Massachusetts, a former textile town some 28 miles north of Boston.
“I am optimistic that we’re going to bring that inflation down, but we’re going to do it amid a labor market that stays quite healthy,” she says.
Yahoo Finance spent the day with Collins as she connected with business owners and community leaders in her district – District 1, one of the largest in the Federal Reserve’s 12-district system that covers six states from Maine to Connecticut – to gauge from the ground up how interest rates and monetary policy are affecting everyday Americans.
"A lot of the data is telling us what happened last month or last quarter, and when we talk to people, they’re telling us what they’re seeing right now," said Collins. "They’re telling us about their plans and how they see things evolving. And so that’s one thing that’s important. It also helps to kind of flesh out what the data are telling."
Does the Fed think the battle to tamp down inflation has been won? Will it begin to cut rates, and if so, when, and by how much?
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