Fed governors divided over further interest rate hikes to tame inflation
Former Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis James Bullard provides insight on the state of the economy on 'The Claman Countdown.'
A pair of speeches by two members of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors offered contrasting views of the status of the central bank’s efforts to tamp down inflation and whether further rate hikes will be necessary.
Michelle Bowman and Christopher Waller, both voting members of the 12-member Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) that determines changes in the Fed’s monetary policy, delivered remarks Tuesday with Bowman saying she believes more rate hikes are needed and Waller saying it may not be necessary.
After inflation hit a 40-year high of 9.1% in June 2022, the Fed embarked on a campaign of interest rate hikes that have pushed rates to their highest level in two decades and reduced inflation to 3.2% as of October — well above the Fed’s 2% target.
Bowman said in remarks at the Utah Banker and Business Leader Breakfast that her «baseline economic outlook continues to expect that we will need to increase the federal funds rate further to keep policy sufficiently restrictive to bring inflation down to our 2 percent target in a timely way.»
BANK OF AMERICA, DEUTSCH BANK PREDICT INTEREST RATE CUTS IN 2024
Two of the 12 voting members of the Federal Open Market Committee expressed contrasting views over the need for more interest rate hikes to tamp down inflation. (Photographer: Nathan Howard/Bloomberg / Getty Images)
She noted that she holds that view despite supporting the FOMC’s decision at its last meeting to hold the benchmark federal funds rate steady while the board continued to assess economic data, and emphasized that «monetary policy is not on a preset course» as the central
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