louis fed president jim bullard. mike? mike: thank you very much and welcome to the campus of stanford university, to all of our bloomberg viewers and listeners worldwide, and to jim bullard, the former st. louis fed bank president. now a dean at purdue university. when you look at where we are, if you were on the committee today, what would you think needs to be done? james: i think the amount of disinflation that occurred in the second half of 2023 was a lot. 200 basis points on the core pce 12 month inflation rate. so, that is big. that is the kind of thing we have not seen on that variable in many, many years. so, very successful, but, as you know, the january, february, march reports stalled out a little bit. but you are still sitting at 2.8% on a 12-month basis. i think the challenge for the committee is to somehow take that disinflation on board, because it does mean you should have a lower policy rate without signaling that you are giving up on the last bit of inflation, 80 basis points you need to get back to 2%.