(Bloomberg) -- Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago President Austan Goolsbee said he adjusted his outlook for interest rates a little higher for 2025 but added he still expects borrowing costs to fall a “fair bit more” over the next 12 to 18 months.
“I’ve made the rate path a little bit more shallow in 2025, but I’ve been saying that the overall thread is that inflation is way down,” Goolsbee said Friday in an interview on CNBC. “I believe we’re on path to 2% and over the next 12-18 months rates can still go down a fair amount.”
Goolsbee spoke after the US central bank cut interest rates for a third consecutive time on Wednesday, bringing them to a range of 4.25% to 4.5%. Policymakers signaled that they’d likely take a much slower approach to policy next year, penciling in just two reductions for 2025.
The Chicago Fed chief, who votes on policy in 2025, agreed with Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s description of policy as “meaningfully restrictive.” He said policy is still far from the so-called neutral rate — a stance of policy that neither stimulates nor restrains policy.
Goolsbee welcomed better-than-expected inflation figures out earlier Friday and said he believes price growth remains on the path toward the central bank’s 2% goal.
Earlier Friday, fresh data showed prices, excluding food and energy, increased 0.1% in November, the smallest monthly advance since May. On a year-over-year basis, though, the core gauge advanced 2.8%, little changed from October and still well above the Fed’s target.