St. Louis Federal Reserve bank president James Bullard on Friday repeated his call for the Fed to pause its current cycle of interest rate increases, saying the central bank may already be restricting the economy. “The current level of the policy rate is about right,” Bullard said in a prepared presentation to the Indiana Banker’s Association, noting that market-based measures of expected inflation have recently dropped, and that by his calculations the current policy rate set by the Fed is already at a slightly restrictive level. Bullard estimated that the so-called neutral rate of interest is just around 2 percent. ... (full story)