The embattled Fed official has missed a key economic data point: dinner chatter

Since becoming a frequent topic of news headlines this year, Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook says she can no longer eavesdrop on diners to hear what people are saying about inflation.

In her first public remarks since President Donald Trump tried to fire her this summer, Cook shed some light on her thinking about how the Fed should set interest rates as it faces risks to its goals of keeping employment high and inflation low. She declined to discuss the details of the ongoing lawsuit she filed to prevent Trump from removing her from office, but hinted at how the uproar affected her style of work.

“Before the current events, I would get lost in Virginia and walk into a restaurant and just listen to people talking about how they were suffering from inflation,” she said during a fireside chat session in Washington on Monday. “I can’t do that anymore, but I interact with ordinary people.”

The government shutdown that began on October 1 deprived the Federal Reserve of its most important official economic data, which its members evaluate when setting monetary policy. That left Cook and other FOMC members to rely on data from outside organizations, some surveys from the Fed itself, and anecdotes from business leaders and the public about the state of the economy.

Fed officials were always scrutinizing all kinds of data, and in the case of former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, they went so far as to monitor men’s underwear sales for any signs of an impending recession.

In a speech and a subsequent interview with David Wessel of the Brookings Institution, Cook said she supported the Fed’s decision to cut its benchmark interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point at its last meeting in October, and said she had not yet decided whether the Fed should cut interest rates again at its next meeting in December.

Cook refused to go into details about her current conflict with Trump, who tried to fire her after accusing her of forging mortgage documents. Cook has sued to stop her dismissal, which, if carried out, would undermine the Fed’s traditional position as independent from the direct control of the White House.

Asked by an audience member to comment on the independence of the Fed, Cook said:

“I won’t say much, but I support it.”