(Reuters) - Chicago Federal Reserve Bank President Austan Goolsbee on Tuesday said he sees some "warning signs" of weakening in the economy, adding that the U.S. central bank's goal is to get inflation down without stressing the labor market.

"I see some warning signs the real economy is weakening," Goolsbee told CNBC in an interview on the sidelines of a European Central Bank conference in Sintra, Portugal. If inflation continues on its path of recent months, he said, he would have more confidence that it is heading toward the Fed's 2% goal, the hurdle that the Fed has set for cutting interest rates. And as inflation drops, he added, Fed policy gets tighter by default. "You only want to stay this restrictive for as long as you have to," he said.