Raphael Bostic looks back on nearly nine years leading the Atlanta Fed

After almost nine years leading the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Raphael Bostic will retire as president and CEO at the end of the week. He oversaw the Federal Reserve’s 6th district through the COVID-19 pandemic, the historic inflation that followed, and most recently the Trump administration’s sweeping global tariffs and attacks on the Fed’s political independence.

Dr. Bostic also has the distinction of being the first Black leader of a regional Fed bank. In 2020, after the murder of George Floyd and ensuing protests, he wrote an essay titled “A Moral and Economic Imperative to End Racism.”

“Marketplace” host Kai Ryssdal spoke with Bostic many times over the years. He was able to sit down with Bostic again during a live event hosted by the Atlanta Fed.

Below, you can watch the full interview or read an edited transcript of part of their conversation.

Kai Ryssdal: The first thing I want to ask you is, not that you're done-done, but what was it like leaving your last FOMC [meeting,] knowing that you were on your way out?

Raphael Bostic: Yeah, you don't know this. So the last FOMC meeting I took virtually, yeah, it was in January, and that was a time when they had the ice storm, and I had three flights canceled trying to get up there, and so I figured three strikes, you’re out, and so I dialed in. So it was kind of surreal to have the last few statements be from a distance and not be able to see people in the room. But it's funny when you know it’s the last time you're going to say things, you're going to make a different kind of statement. And what I really wanted people, my colleagues, to know is what I appreciated about what Atlanta allowed me to bring to the table and how we have a distinctive voice because of what we do, and that more people needed to lean in on that and be that way. And then I just said, I'm going to be cheering for you as we move forward, and know that, from what everything I've heard, Americans trust the Fed and believe in it, and think it's a really important institution. And need everyone to remember our mandates, remember our mission, and just be true to it always.

Ryssdal: So let's talk about right now. This is, and you've said a version of this, as uncertain a time, as tough a time for monetary policy and central bankers as there has been in a very long while. First of all, why do you believe that? Why do you say that?

Bostic: Well, I'll say it like this. When I go and talk in public settings, a question I often get is, what are the three things that are keeping you up at night?

Ryssdal: You have only three? I mean, I'm a regular guy, and I’ve got like, a dozen.

Bostic: Yeah, I try to be Zen. I just, you gotta push some things out. And in 2020 a global pandemic wasn't on my list. In 2021 and 2022 a war in Europe wasn't on my list. I've been talking with my team a lot about how much you should weight what historical economic models predict versus what we're hearing from people in the street. And in environments where the unexpected and the unusual is happening, those models become less effective, and so then it's much more art that you have to do, and it's much harder that way. I think you see that in terms of sort of how the committee has been over the last six to eight months, in terms of dissents on both sides. I think part of it is because there's so much uncertainty about what's actually going to happen, that people can have very different narratives about what they think is most likely.

Ryssdal: Do those dissents bother you? The idea that people are going to not go along with the majority of the committee?

Bostic: No, I actually think that's a sign of a healthy committee. I've been in a number of meetings where the data were pretty clear, and so the idea that you'd have like, five different views was really unlikely. And so in those situations, you know, not having any dissents was fine, because I thought that things were pretty obvious. Today, very little is obvious. And so, the dissents, I think, are a byproduct of that, as opposed to a sign of dysfunction.

Ryssdal: So let's talk about for a second what you're looking at right now in this economy. And you're not allowed to say “labor market” or “inflation.” Go.

Bostic: I'm trying to understand how much of the turbulence that we're seeing is likely to be episodic or versus how much is it going to be structural. You take AI and technology, there are lots of reports — you all have done a number of these as well — to suggest that these new technologies are going to change the way that businesses think about how many people they need to produce the goods that they want to produce. That could be a structural change. If that winds up being true and it winds up penetrating through the entire economy, then all of our benchmarks are going to have to change, like how we think about what a good jobs number is, or what unemployment rate that's reasonable should be, because the same number is sending a very different signal. And then there are some things that could be episodic, but they also could be structural. So you think about the tariffs. President Trump, in his first term, introduced tariffs. President Biden kept them, and now we've doubled down in Trump two. Is it episodic, or will we at some point return back? Or is this our new reality that all businesses are going to have to adapt or adjust to for the next 10,15, 20 years.

Ryssdal: Let me go sideways here for just a second, since you mentioned the president and tariffs, I truly do not want to get political about this, but how did — because you're almost gone — how does it make you feel when your job is, through data-informed decision making and public communications, to try to control as best you can the fate of this economy, and really kind of now, the last year, it hasn't been in your control.

Bostic: So I actually don't think it's ever 100%

Ryssdal: Yeah, no, granted. Granted, right? 

Bostic: What I would say is we're trying to control what we can control. And in order to do that, we need to understand how decision makers are operating in whatever environment that we have. Look, at the beginning of 2025, most businesses that we were talking to said, “we know there's going to be some tariffs that are going to be put on the economy.” Then April comes, and what everyone discovered was what they thought the level was going to be was maybe 20% of what it turned out to be. And what's been interesting is that businesses and families as well have been quite creative to try to mute the impacts as much as they can. So it's meant that the influence on tariffs through the economy has been stretched out over a much longer period of time, because everyone's trying to delay, postpone, parry, and they've been successful.

Ryssdal: But that doesn't come without stress, right? Small businesses are stressed. Consumers are stressed. You know this; you go out and talk to as many people as I do. 

Bostic: Oh, I'm stressed too. We're all stressed. So, yeah, so, OK, a couple things. So one, uncertainty, by itself, makes people nervous. Second, big changes lead to real questions about viability of business models. So now businesses have to figure out, do I have a business model that's going to work, and small businesses don't have as much buffer to really be able to weather it. So it becomes much more existential for those sort of institutions. We've seen it with families as well. So affluent families have been able to really just roll through and flow, and others at the lower end of the income distribution are making substitutions to try to manage it as you go along. Look, you know that consumer sentiment is very low. Particularly when you look at the aggregate economy output, and it's above potential. People should be happy in this environment, but they're not. And it's the stress that I think is overlaying a lot of that.

Ryssdal: How do you reconcile, though, just consumers being really cranky and yet still spending, like a lot.

Bostic: Because there isn't one just generic consumer. I think you have, like, some consumers who are spending a lot a lot, and then you have other consumers who are trying to spend as little as possible, and because our economy is skewed so where much of GDP and aggregate output is driven by spending by the upper percentage of percentiles, you get to a number that is higher than you might otherwise think. It's one of the reasons, another one of the reasons why this is a really difficult time to be a central banker.

Ryssdal: Sorry, how much of a factor though is that K-shaped economy in your thinking? And also, you don't speak for the committee, but you guys chitchat over coffee from time to time. I'm sure.

Bostic: Yeah, I drink tea, so I'm not in those things. 

Ryssdal: Beverage of choice. I don't know if the Fed has happy hours, but maybe that too.

Bostic: Those are Vegas times, so not allowed to talk about those. So our tagline is “an economy that works for everyone,” right? And so we need to understand how every person, wherever they are, is experiencing the economy. And then how does that range of experiences influence where we think policy needs to go?

Kai Ryssdal: All right, to the nuts and bolts of this economy, and now you are allowed to use “the labor market” or “inflation.”

Raphael Bostic: You notice I haven't said either of those words. I follow directions. 

Ryssdal: You mentioned unemployment. Where do you stand? Where's the balance of risks?

Bostic: Inflation.

Ryssdal: Thanks for coming on my TED Talk. 

Bostic: So I would say it like this. One, the longer we're not at target, the higher the likelihood that people will stop expecting that we will ever get to target, and then they'll start making decisions as if inflation is not going to be 2% but it's going to be 3%, and that will change the set of investments that make sense. It'll change the amount of risk taking that you have to take in the marketplace. It will put our economy in a tougher situation. So I worry about that. 

And then the second thing is that we've been talking about getting inflation to 2% for a long time, and we said we'll do whatever it takes. Like, if it looks like we stopped doing whatever it takes, then people might start worrying about our credibility. Like, do they have the stick-to-itiveness that we need them to have to have that longer-run potential? And that's probably – so the inflation side has been a big concern for me for a long time.

Now you go to the labor market and there, I think it's actually very complicated. And it's complicated because I do think there are some structural changes happening that are making it difficult for me, and anybody really, to have a good sense of what the implications are for where the economy is moving forward. So I think about AI and technology. Businesses are less eager to hire. Labor supply has contracted because we've counted so much on immigration and now the number of people coming to be available for work is just much lower. All those things mean that a single monthly job number today actually is sending a different signal than it sent a year ago. And so —  

Ryssdal: Sorry, explain that a little bit. 

Bostic: Sure, because there's a relationship between the number of workers, the amount of capital you have, and what that means for output. And if you want to think about the strength of the economy, if you want to think about the total productive potential of the economy, you need to understand how labor and capital come together to produce goods. Now, if the labor supply is down, then you don't have enough workers. You don't have just numbers of workers to produce. So that's going to bring down your productive capacity. If you have technology that counters that, then with that lower number of workers, you can actually get to higher outcomes and higher outputs. So then the low number of workers is not a signal of weakness, right? And so we need to be thinking about how all these things fit together. We have a labor market, I think, where there's a lot of uncertainty. And when I talk to businesses, they don't tell me that they're going to lay off a ton of people. They're worried about their workforce. 

Ryssdal: But also they're not hiring a ton of people.

Bostic: Because of uncertainty, right? Because they think there's technology that might be able to replace some of that stuff, so that not hiring is not a sign that they're weak, right? It's a sign that they might have other strategies that can work. 

Ryssdal: So this is really interesting, because I went back and I listened to the most recent interview that you and I did, which was, it was a while ago, but you were, and I said this at the time, we've been talking for a long time, you've always been reasonably steady state. You were as downbeat, I think, as I had ever heard you, and it sounds like you're kind of still there.

Bostic: So I pushed back on that in that interview. 

Ryssdal: Yeah, you did!

Bostic: Look, I think we are seeing a lot of turbulence, and it is hard to know for sure what it means for the long run trajectory of this economy. 

Ryssdal: Okay, wait, let me try to put that into English, because people are going to hear a central banker say, “turbulence” and “long run” and they're thinking, “Oh, my God!” Over to you, sir.

Bostic: Calm down. It'll be all right. So look, we have a lot of, we have geopolitical stuff going on. We have a lot of uncertainty around the tariffs and what it means. We have AI that is — you see headlines all the time about the potential for it to disrupt. You see all the things around immigration and the fear that is in many of these communities about, can you go to work, or can kids go to school? There are a lot of things going on. That's the turbulence. That is the reality. And I think everyone sees, that's pretty straightforward.

But what is not straightforward is the question of what you're going to do. In my lifetime, we've not had this series of things all happening at the same time. So the models that we're going to use are — I don't have confidence, are going to be super helpful in predicting where we're going to be moving forward. So I got to talk to the people who are making the decisions that will determine where we are, how we're going to move forward, and then try to glean things out of that. That's a lot of work. I’m trying to think why you think I'm downbeat.

Ryssdal: Based on our past conversations, right? You always in our conversations have been, you know what? We're going to figure this out. The Fed's doing its job. The economy is resilient. In the last like year and a change, you're talking about uncertainty and how you're making decisions in a fog, and that, coming from you, hits as downbeat. Not pejoratively, just, you know —

Bostic: I understand. OK, we're going to figure it out.

Ryssdal: Clean up on aisle six!

Bostic: Figuring it out is going to take a little more time, because there's more complication. Figuring [it] out will mean that, I think we're going to have to move more cautiously, but we're going to keep doing our job. And you know one thing I always say, I don't have a recession in my outlook. Like that is not where I see this economy going. 

Ryssdal: Still today, now?

Bostic: Still today, right now. I do not. And to me, that's why I'm mystified a little on the “downbeat.” This economy has been remarkably resilient in the aggregate. It has weathered a lot of stuff. And when we talk to businesses today, they tell us, the last quarter, the last second half of 2025 was pretty strong. They think we're going to get exactly that as the baseline, right? So none of the input or the feedback that we're getting tells us that the economy is on the cusp of something terrible, and quite the contrary, we're going to produce at a pretty robust level.