ALBAWABA – Three United States (US) Federal Reserve (Fed) officials said Monday that further US interest rate hikes are likely necessary to bring inflation back to the Fed’s, the central bank, target, Bloomberg reported.
“We’ve made a lot of progress in monetary policy,” Federal Reserve Vice Chair for Supervision Michael Barr said, addressing a Bipartisan Policy Center meeting on Monday. “I would say we’re close, but we still have a bit of work to do.”
The Fed pinned US interest rates in June, after raising them for 10 straight meetings to a range of 5-5.25 percent in the months of March 2022 through May 2023.
However, the Fed will likely need “a couple more rate hikes over the course of this year to really bring inflation back into a path that’s along a sustainable 2 percent path,” San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly said at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
Cleveland Fed chief Loretta Mester, speaking at an event hosted by the University of California, San Diego, also concurred with her colleague’s projections.
“In order to ensure that inflation is on a sustainable and timely path back to 2 percent, my view is that the funds rate will need to move up somewhat further from its current level and then hold there for a while as we accumulate more information on how the economy is evolving,” she said.
The Fed’s monetary policy committee will convene July 25-26 and is widely expected to resume hiking US interest rates.
