Fed’s Goolsbee Hopeful US Can Avoid Recession Despite Rate Hikes

  • Conventional wisdom holds inflation-rate drop needs recession
  • Chicago Fed chief speaks at event in Madison, Wisconsin

Austan Goolsbee

Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg
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Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago President Austan Goolsbee said he’s hopeful the US is able to avoid a recession despite rapid and steep interest-rate hikes over the past 18 months.

“There’s a widely held conventional wisdom that if you get the inflation rate down more than 5 percentage points you will have to have a big recession to do that,” Goolsbee said Thursday at an event in Madison, Wisconsin. “So far, we haven’t had that recession, I’m still hopeful we can avoid it entirely.”