(Bloomberg) — Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago President Austan Goolsbee downplayed a report released last week that showed an increase in consumers’ expectations for future inflation.
The figure “wasn’t a great number,” Goolsbee said Sunday in an interview on News Nation. “But it’s only one month of data. You need at least two or three months for that to count.”
A closely watched gauge of longer-term inflation expectations, a key ingredient in the Fed’s monetary policy decision making, rose to its highest level in almost three decades, a report Friday showed.
Consumers expect prices will climb at an annual rate of 3.5% over the next 5 to 10 years, according to the final February reading from the University of Michigan. The rate is the highest since 1995, based on data compiled by Bloomberg, and was almost entirely driven by views among survey respondents who are Democrats.
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