Patrick Harker Suggests Fed Dual Mandate Complications Warrant Hierarchical Focus on Inflation
Reflecting on his decade on the FOMC, Patrick Harker argues that the Fed's dual mandate can lead down a difficult path and suggests a hierarchical approach where inflation is treated as job one before addressing unemployment.
“The idea that we have a dual mandate, it's in law, it's what we do, but this is what leads us down a bad path. I think we should actually start to think more in a hierarchical fashion. Inflation is job one.”
Patrick Harker
Heard on Macro Musings with David Beckworth — “Patrick Harker on Real-Time Payments and the Future of the Federal Reserve”, published Monday, October 26, 2026. Heardvine summarizes and quotes with attribution and timestamps, and links to the original everywhere.