Radical opinions on the economy aren’t hard to come by right now: Tech titans, economists, Wall Street giants, and politicians have all suggested that AI will be transformative, but can’t agree on whether it will be for good or evil. Extreme divides in opinion are also appearing over policy—be it trade, immigration, interest rates, or national debt.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago’s president and CEO, Austan Goolsbee, is less concerned with prophecies of chaos or prosperity—he’s more focused on the reality of American consumers, and the businesses they work for.
In a landmark Jackson Hole speech last week, new Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh said inflation was the sharpest focus, at present, for the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), of which Goolsbee is a member. The reason: Price rises are comfortably ahead of the central bank’s mandated 2% target, pushed higher by supply-side shocks like the Middle East oil upset and tariffs.
Speaking exclusively to Fortune, Goolsbee agreed with the balance of concerns Warsh laid out: “On the real side, we’ve been stable, now inching toward dangers of overheat, and on the inflation side, after a couple of years of strong progress, it stalled out and started getting worse. But, we’ve had one encouraging report, one okay report, and now our challenge is … the inflation.”
