He held the Allan H. Meltzer Professorship in economics at Carnegie Mellon University; he was previously the director of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.
Following his 2017 nomination to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, the White House decided to forgo renominating Goodfriend at the beginning of the new term.
His teaching and research interests include macroeconomic fluctuations, monetary theory and policy, banking and financial markets, and economic development.
He was a critic of an actively regulating role of the Fed and has repeatedly argued against the current form of quantitative easing as well as bond buying programs,[13] especially the purchases of mortgage-backed securities.
[15] Asked at a Senate confirmation hearing for a seat on the Federal Reserve's board of governors in January 2018 why he got his prediction wrong, Goodfriend did not give an explanation and instead spoke of the value of low inflation.
He invented the term "inflation scare" to describe how the FOMC responded to discrete rises in bond rates as a sign that inflationary expectations were unanchored.
[25] Goodfriend was a member[26] of the Shadow Open Market Committee, an independent group of economists who strive for a new way of thinking about monetary politics.