Federal Reserve Logan hints inflation is top concern, urges caution on rate cuts

Lorie Logan, president of the Dallas Fed, said the US central bank had strayed more from its inflation target than from its employment maximisation target and reiterated that officials should tread carefully in cutting interest rates. "Right now, we are the furthest from the inflation side of these targets and our forecasts suggest it will take some time to get back to 2 per cent," she told a conference in Mexico City on Friday. "But of course there is a lot of uncertainty in the world." The Dallas Fed president said that when she assessed the US labour market, she was focusing mainly on the unemployment rate, not the jobs data. She added that the unemployment rate was close to where many economists thought it should fall in the long run. The unemployment rate in the United States was 4.3% in August; data for September could not be released on Friday due to the federal government shutdown.