(Reuters) -Federal Reserve Governor Stephen Miran on Friday said he would vote for a quarter-percentage-point interest rate cut at the December meeting if his vote meant the difference in securing a rate reduction, despite having dissented at both of his prior meetings in favor of a larger cut.
“I would absolutely vote for a 25-basis-point cut if my vote were the marginal vote, there’s no question about that,” Miran said on Bloomberg Television. “To do otherwise would be to cause real harm to the economy for purposes of vanity, and that’s not who I am.”
Since joining the Fed board in September, Miran has twice cast votes in opposition to the Federal Open Market Committee majority’s back-to-back quarter-point cuts, favoring instead a half-point cut both times.
His willingness to show flexibility as the December meeting approaches shows how close the margin of support for an additional cut may be, with a range of policymakers – especially a cadre of reserve bank presidents – recently expressing hesitance to do so with inflation roughly a percentage point above their 2% target.
Miran has persistently argued that current elevated readings of inflation will not hold for long, and that data from the job market – including a long-delayed employment report for September published Thursday – argues for a less restrictive policy stance.
“Given the outlook for inflation there’s not really much of a need to be as restrictive as we are,” Miran said.
(Reporting By Dan Burns; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama )
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