Austan Goolsbee, President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, speaks to the Economic Club of New York in New York City, U.S., April 10, 2025. Brendan McDermid | ReutersChicago Federal Reserve President Austan Goolsbee on Friday explained why he voted against this week’s interest rate cut, saying policymakers should have waited until they had more information before easing further.”I’m pretty optimistic that for 2026 rates will will be able to be a fair bit lower than they are today,” the central banker said during a CNBC interview. “But I’ve just been uncomfortable front loading too many rate cuts and assuming that what we’ve seen in inflation will be transitory.”Goolsbee was one of three Federal Open Market Committee members to vote against the quarter percentage point reduction, the third consecutive easing measure. He was joined by Kansas City Fed President Jeffrey Schmid, as well as Governor Stephen Miran, who preferred a steeper cut.While he has said in the past he sees room for rates to come down further, Goolsbee said a lack of progress on inflation argued against moving now.”While I voted to lower rates at the September and October meetings, I believe we should have waited to get more data, especially about inflation, before lowering rates further,” the policymaker said in a post on the Chicago Fed’s website.”Given that inflation has been above our target for four and a half years, further progress on it has been stalled for several months, and almost all the businesspeople and consumers we have spoken to in the district lately identify prices as a main concern, I felt the more prudent course would have been to wait for more information.” he wrote. Goolsbee will not be a voter on t …
