And as the Minnesota Fed president made clear, he doesn't believe the economy is sufficiently sunny, as it were, to warrant a Fed rate hike. He believes that unemployment still has some room to fall. And more importantly, inflation is still well below the Fed's stated goal of 2 percent, such that a hike now could hurt the Fed's credibility regarding its inflation target.  That tells him that the Fed ended quantitative easing too early, and is jumping the gun by looking to raise rates this year.  "Monetary stimulus pushes both employment and prices in the same direction. By providing somewhat more stimulus, the FOMC could have stimulated at least somewhat more employment growth, without creating undue inflation," he said in his prepared remarks at the MNI-hosted event.  In the December Federal Open Markets Committee meeting statement to which Kocherlakota (who is not a voting member in 2015) dissented, the policymakers said it would be "patient in beginning to normalize the stance of monetary policy," which is a mild shift from the earlier "considerable time" language. The committee did take pains to note that this fresh guidance is "consistent" with the "considerable time" noted in its prior statement.  Many market participants believe the first rate hike will come in October, though some believe it will come as early as June. After all, the fed funds rate target has been between 0 and 0.25 percent since December 2008, and the economy has improved significantly over the past six years.  Yet for Kocherlakota, it's not about how long monetary policy has been easy—or about how long Minnesotans have been wearing long pants. The more salient factor is the weather outside.
It sounds like a joke: Why is raising rates like wearing shorts in Minnesota? But for the Minneapolis Fed's Kocherlakota, the risks are dead serious.