speeches · August 1, 2022
Regional President Speech
James Bullard · President
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From the President
Re�ections on the Disin�ationary Methods of
Poincaré and Thatcher
August 2, 2022
Presentation (PDF)
St. Louis Fed President Jim Bullard talked about the academic literature related to
“credible” versus “incredible” disin�ation and how that may apply to current conditions. He
spoke before the Money Marketeers of New York University.
Current in�ation in the U.S. and the euro area (EA) is near 1970s levels, Bullard said. The
disin�ation under former Fed Chair Paul Volcker was costly, he added, but it was not
credible initially—Volcker had to earn credibility.
Nobel laureate and economist Thomas Sargent initiated a literature on costless disin�ation
(“soft landings”) that emphasized in�ation expectations as the key variable, not the Phillips
curve, Bullard noted. Subsequent literature illustrated how credibility might be earned in
models that depart from rational expectations, he said.
“The Fed and the ECB [European Central Bank] have considerable credibility compared
with their 1970s counterparts, suggesting that a soft landing is feasible in the U.S. and the
EA if the post-pandemic regime shift is executed well,” Bullard concluded.
Cite this document
APA
James Bullard (2022, August 1). Regional President Speech. Speeches, Federal Reserve. https://whenthefedspeaks.com/doc/regional_speeche_20220802_james_bullard
BibTeX
@misc{wtfs_regional_speeche_20220802_james_bullard,
author = {James Bullard},
title = {Regional President Speech},
year = {2022},
month = {Aug},
howpublished = {Speeches, Federal Reserve},
url = {https://whenthefedspeaks.com/doc/regional_speeche_20220802_james_bullard},
note = {Retrieved via When the Fed Speaks corpus}
}