Dallas Federal Reserve Bank President Richard Fisher said Tuesday he is comfortable with the direction of the Federal Open Market Committee on the timing of interest rate hikes and doesn’t feel the need to dissent after the July 29-30 meeting.
“I felt the last meeting … that the discussion was moving in more my direction, so I didn’t feel the need to dissent,” Fisher said in an interview with Fox Business channel.
If the FOMC changes course or doesn’t continue to move in his direction, Fisher said he will dissent, but added “it’s more important here, I think, to work with the group and make sure we’re achieving a consensus and make sure we are all behind a certain direction.”
“And I think we’re moving closer to my direction,” he said, “but time will tell.”
Fisher, who is a voter on the policymaking committee this year, also said he saw the date of the first rate move moving “further forward” after the latest meeting, reiterating comments he made in an Aug. 1 interview with CNBC.
Asked Tuesday if the Fed was too worried about how the markets would react to rate increases, Fisher said “I think what we should focus in on is the real economy.”
He added: “I have argued publicly that zero interest rates and this massive monetary accommodation obviously has distorted the markets. These valuations are very, very high.”
Fisher did not join Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank President Charles Plosser in a dissent of the FOMC’s July statement.
Plosser dissented because he “no longer believe(s) that the forward guidance language in the statement is appropriate or warranted,” he said in a statement last week.
Before the meeting, Fisher had expressed worries the Fed was getting behind the curve, saying in an Los Angeles speech he was “increasingly at odds with some of my respected colleagues at the policy table of the Federal Reserve as well as with the thinking of many notable economists.”