Boston Fed President Susan Collins spoke with Bloomberg before Powell's speech at the Jackson Hole economic symposium, Collins stated that job growth slowing but arguments for taking more time, not a done deal on what we do at the next meeting and policy is modestly restrictive, which is appropriate.
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Questions asked in this interview
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0:15Where are you in the continuum of which you need to be most worried about?
0:49What about the compromise that's been floated by some people that you cut rate once and then you wait?
1:48So what are companies in your district telling you about their plans for both employment and prices?
3:03Why did there seem to be confidence before that inflation was on a sustainable path down to 2%? Why is it no longer?
4:24Because would that really cause runaway inflation?
5:15Or a more long term, but steady rise in inflation that would lead to inflation expectations becoming unreal?
6:37Does the Fed just have to wait because so many things are firing on all cylinders, as a president just noted?
8:40What's Fed Chair Powell going to say? No one's listening?
There's a lot going on with this meeting, I will say, and delighted to be here with you. The framework review, which we will hear more about, very complicated context, obviously.
There is this dual mandate that's in question, the idea of inflation versus labor. Where are you in the continuum of which you need to be most worried about?
Well, you need to be looking at the balance. You need to be looking at all of that. Growth has been slowing recently, but at the same time, overall economic fundamentals are relatively solid. And that's a context in which it's not surprising to see the indicators being mixed. Some are stronger and some are a bit weaker. You got to look at the whole picture and not focus too much on any one or two specific indicators.
There's a lot of people who are concerned that you might be late getting to the economy if you wait for unemployment to rise significantly. On the other hand, you might see inflation rise fast. What about the compromise that's been floated by some people that you cut rate once and then you wait?
Well, you do have to be thinking about all of it. We cannot wait until all of the uncertainty is behind us. You've got to make decisions in real time. So I think that part is true. It is a complex context for monetary policy because I see upside risks to inflation related to tariffs, already starting to see some of that, and downside risks on the labor market side. And so it's about balancing those features. And I don't get ahead of a decision that we're going to make for four weeks from now. We're going to see data in between now and then, but it's going to be about balancing those risks and focus on both sides of that mandate.
Well, I know data is important, but it's also backward looking. So what are companies in your district telling you about their plans for both employment and prices?
Yeah, absolutely. Because I do think that complementing all of the statistical analysis that we are always, I'm a total data geek, right? You got to be in this role with what we're hearing is really important. And what I'm hearing is pretty consistent with what I'm seeing in the data, actually. And so on the labor market side, while the job growth has certainly slowed, it's somewhat more concentrated. At the same time, a number of those indicators are quite healthy. And so on that side of it, I think that there are arguments for taking a bit more time, but I'm very focused on how those downside risks are evolving. And then on the inflation side, what I'm hearing is that early days in terms of the impact of tariffs coming through into prices over time for a number of different reasons. So what I'm hearing from firms around my district, which is most of New England, and what we're seeing in the data as we do that analysis at the Boston Fed are pretty much telling a similar story.
From that context, I was looking at where inflation was the last time that we were here and heard a Jackson Hole speech versus now. And it's crept higher. It's gone in the wrong direction. When you look at CPI, it's basically ground around the same place in core PCE. Why did there seem to be confidence before that inflation was on a sustainable path down to 2%? Why is it no longer?
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Collins, S. (2025, August 23). Collins Says Next Fed Decision Not a Done Deal [Interview transcript]. Bloomberg Television. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/613119/
MLA
Susan Collins. "Collins Says Next Fed Decision Not a Done Deal." Bloomberg Television, 23 Aug. 2025. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/613119/.
BibTeX
@misc{collins2025_613119,
author = {Susan Collins},
title = {Collins Says Next Fed Decision Not a Done Deal},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, Bloomberg Television. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2025},
month = {aug},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/613119/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
