Watch CNBC's full interview with Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee

I mean, I thought two things. One, I gotta get Rick over to the bank and take him to lunch. We're both here. It's been a while since I've seen him. You still owe me lunch. The thing about the job market, Steve, is we're really going to go back into this? The money you owe me and the meals you owe me. But now you can't pay me because the ethics rules forbid it. But one of these days, Joe, I'm getting over there. I would like to go with you now with the new Austan. I love you now. What happened? Someone dropped you on your head or something? So, here's the thing about the data on the job market. It feels to me like we get continuous months that emphasize we're in a pretty steady, stable, full employment kind of circumstance. Middle of last year when things were getting worse, cooling at a steady pace, you could make the argument that most of the time when the unemployment rate rises, let's say one full percentage point over a year, that's usually an indicator of something of the business cycle and it's going to get worse. But what we've seen in the last year is stable full employment. And nothing has changed with the UI claims or with the broader measures of the job market in my mind that have bumped me off that view.

I don't. That's the big question mark. I think the most important thing to figure out is the through line of where are we going? And I said before April 2nd, on dual mandate grounds, we were doing pretty well. Stable full employment and I felt inflation coming down in the mid twos and coming down toward the 2% target. And in a circumstance where that's prevailing, I believe that the rates will go down a fair bit more from where they are today. And you can see that in the dot plot. If you look at where the members of the committee think the settling point is, there's pretty wide agreement. It's well below where we are today. The tariffs and other uncertainties in the economy threw a bunch of dust in the air. So I do think it's important that we get clarity that there's not going to be an increase in inflation, or if there is going to be an increase in inflation that it's not going to be a lasting increase in inflation, that it is in fact going to be transitory. Now like you say, Steve, we've had three but nine months of inflation readings and for a month and a half of that we had the beginnings of tariffs. So if tariffs stay in their lane, which is to say imported goods are only 11% of GDP, so if people don't freak out and change their behavior, and if we don't get a lot of retaliation from other countries, and if we don't jack up the rates on domestic production, then my hope would be that we don't see the inflation. But we've got to get a few months of clarity before I'm ready to say that they didn't have an impact.

I don't know. I don't like tying our hands or restricting our actions before we've gotten all the information we can. And you've been to the room where the FOMC meeting takes place. It's literally the biggest table I've ever seen in my life. So everything is always on that table. It fits on that table, but we still have tariffs coming. July 9th, we're going to get another announcement. We've got the China deadline. So just on the tariff part, we still have uncertainties and we've got to see how many of these others play out, whether it's oil prices and geopolitics or what's happening with productivity. So, I'm optimistic that we've been getting good readings and maybe the impact of tariffs will be held just in their lane, but we want to be sure. And at moments where there's lots of uncertainty, as I say, you just got to get some of the dirt out of the air.

Yeah, hopefully it has no effect. As you know, economists are basically unanimous on the importance that central banks be free from political interference when setting monetary policy. And the reason why economists are unanimous about that is if you just look at places where they do not have that, inflation is worse, growth is worse, unemployment is higher. I think it's a mistake if we're going to start messing with the political interference part. You can look at the minutes and then eventually you'll be able to see word for word transcript what is on the minds of the Open Market Committee when we make the decision. It's not politics. It's not what people are saying outside. It's the economic conditions and the outlook that drive the decisions.