Atlanta Fed President Lockhart has been doing the rounds lately:

Reuters have a little more on his comments:

  • “It is reasonable with the improving data to begin to anticipate a change in the basic interest rate policy and, therefore, it is quite a reasonable debate as to whether that ought to be early 2015 or mid-2015 or even later”
  • “The debate is real”
  • Lockhart … continues to forecast a rate increase in mid-2015 … feels it is “still early” to change the central bank’s main policy statement
  • That statement says a rate increase won’t be appropriate until a “considerable time” after the central bank’s bond purchases end this fall, and that there is still “significant underutilization” of labor.