n 2012, Narayana Kocherlakota did something that’s rare for a policymaker of his prominence: He changed his mind. Kocherlakota was the president of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank, which gave him a rotating seat on the powerful Federal Open Market Committee. That’s the committee that decides whether — and to what extent — the Fed should use its control over the money supply to boost the economy.
When Kocherlakota took the helm of the Minneapolis Fed in 2009, the Minneapolis Star Tribune described him as “openly suspicious of government's ability to bolster economic growth.” That view was evident in 2011, when Kocherlakota cast a rare dissenting vote against a stronger Fed effort to boost the economy. He argued that the Fed’s dovish policies could create too much inflation.
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