FED: Atlanta's Bostic: Cuts Base Case But Uncertainty Could Mean Later Action

Atlanta Fed President Bostic (slight hawkish leaning, non-2025 voter) says in a Q&A following Wednesday's surprisingly strong January CPI print that the Fed isn't "in a hurry" to cut rates, echoing some of his colleagues' comments in the past couple of weeks. Importantly, his rate cut outlook appears to be roughly in line with the overall FOMC median voter's.

• He says "we all have to sit tight, and we're sitting tight too. Until we have more clarity, it's going to be impossible to make a judgement about where our policy should go, how fast and at what pace. We're just going to have to get more information before we're going to be able to move on that.. We're not in a hurry. We'll move when we have enough information to move."
• Bostic said that his estimate of neutral rates is 3%-3.5% (he has cited this estimate previously) and his baseline is that inflation gets to 2% in early 2026. On rates, "we get halfway there by the end of this year and finish it off in 2026. The uncertainty for me has caused me to be less confident that I know when we're going to be able to take that first step and might have a mindset that patience suggests it will happen later than otherwise."
• That trajectory is consistent with the FOMC December SEP median of 50bp of cuts this year and 50bp next year to 3.25-3.50%.
• He said that the latest inflation numbers show that careful monitoring is still needed, while he also noted that the labor market is still performing "incredibly" well.