James Bullard

James Bullard served as President of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis from 2008 to 2023. He was known for being one of the most transparent and analytically engaged FOMC members, regularly publishing papers and speeches explaining his thinking. He became one of the earliest and most vocal advocates for raising interest rates to address inflation in 2021, before it was consensus at the Fed. His early hawkishness on inflation proved prescient, and he subsequently advocated for front-loading rate hikes — raising rates quickly at the start of the cycle. He left the Fed in 2023 to become Dean of Purdue University's Daniels School of Business. His academic research at the St. Louis Fed drew heavily on multiple equilibrium models of monetary policy, which informed his distinctive views on the relationship between inflation, interest rates, and equilibrium switching. He held a PhD in economics from Indiana University and published extensively on monetary theory. His St. Louis Fed built a distinctive research profile on global economic conditions, particularly focused on international monetary frameworks and the implications of multiple policy rate equilibria — research that underpinned his policy views.