For someone who has previously argued that he takes the Fed’s dual mandate seriously, and has also believed that unemployment in the current recession is demand determined, not supply determined, it is odd to hear the chairman giving so little weight to the fact that the Fed’s employment objective will not be achieved for several years…. Although the chairman says that it is a symmetrical target around 2 percent, the committee in fact seems to have little or no tolerance for taking any risk that inflation might exceed 2 percent for even a fairly short space of time. This is also more hawkish than would seem consistent with the dual mandate…. [T]he FOMC seems have veered in the direction of interpreting its target rather like the ECB, where 2 percent inflation is regarded as a ceiling, not an average, and where unemployment formally has no role in monetary policy…