St. Louis President James Bullard said in a Bloomberg TV interview that “It’s too early to talk about changing monetary policy.” Policymakers want to “stay with our very easy monetary policy while we are still in the pandemic tunnel”. “If we get to the end of the tunnel,” he added, “it will be time to start assessing where we want to go next.”

“When you start to get to 75% vaccinated, 80% vaccinated and CDC starts to give more hopeful messages that we are bringing this under better control and starts relaxing some of their guidelines, then I think the whole economy will gain confidence from that,” Bullard said. “Cases are up right now, that is a little bit concerning.”

Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren said in a speech, “assuming virus variants do not become especially problematic, we should see an unusually strong post-recession recovery.”

“The combination of accommodative monetary and fiscal policy, and consumers and firms well positioned to renew spending, should result in returning to full employment much more quickly than after the last financial crisis and Great Recession,” he added.

However, “many of the underlying problems that can disrupt financial stability – as at the outset of the pandemic – still need to be addressed.”

Full speech here.

In the CBS’ 60 Minutes aired on Sunday, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said “we feel like we’re at a place where the economy’s about to start growing much more quickly and job creation coming in much more quickly”. He added that the growth in H2 is “going to be very strong”.

“There really are risks out there,” he added. “And the principal one just is that we will reopen too quickly, people will too quickly return to their old practices, and we’ll see another spike in cases.” But even in that case, any spike in cases wouldn’t be as disastrous as prior ones, thanks to vaccinations. The economy will still “move ahead more quickly to the extent we keep the spread of COVID under control.”

The time to for the administration to reduce the budget deficit is “when the economy is strong and we’re fully recovered and people are working and taxes are rolling in,” he said. “The time to do that is not now.”

Fed Vice Chair Richard Clarida said in a Bloomberg TV interview that there is a lot of “pent-demand” as well as “pent-up supply” in the economy. Both supply and demand will be in play as the year progresses. The “baseline expectation” is that most of the early rise in inflation this year will “revert by year-end”.

“If inflation at the end of the year has not declined from where it is at the middle of the year might be ‘good evidence’ of inflation that is not transitory,” he added.

Also, Clarida reiterated that “substantial progress is actual progress.” Fed will inform the public about the progresses “as we go through the year”. “We will have ample opportunities as data comes in to inform Fed observers on our progress”, he said.

San Francisco President Mary Daly she’s “bullish on the rebound” of the economy. Yet, “we have a long way to go before the job is complete.” She expects a small pick-up in inflation this year. But like many other Fed officials, she expected the pick-up to be transitory.

On monetary policy, she said, “we said substantial further progress, we have to see it, we don’t have to expect it, we have to see it”, before considering stimulus exit. For now, “you still see real pockets of weakness, real pockets of concern.”

Fed Chair Jerome Powell said in an IMF event, ” there will be upward pressure on prices which may be passed along to consumers in the form of price increases”. But he added, “we think that that will be temporary.” He also noted that inflation has been low for more than two decades, and that fed into a psychology of low inflation expectations.

“If inflation were unexpectedly, counter to our expectations, to move meaningfully above levels where we are comfortable – and in particular inflation expectations… if we see them moving persistently and materially above levels we are comfortable with, then we would react to that,” he said.