(Reuters) – San Francisco Federal Reserve President Mary Daly on Monday said a half-percentage-point interest rate hike, or a quarter-percentage-point increase, are both possibilities for the U.S. central bank’s Jan. 31-Feb. 1 meeting.
“I can give you arguments for either side,” Daly said in a webcast interview with the Wall Street Journal. The Fed should try to bring inflation down “as gently as we can,” but it also “absolutely” needs to make sure high inflation does not become embedded.
Daly said she thinks the policy rate, now in a 4.25%-4.50% range, will ultimately need to go to 5.00%-5.25% and stay there to bring inflation back down to the Fed’s 2% target, but exactly how far it will need to rise will depend on the data. She said she expects the U.S. unemployment rate, now at 3.5%, to rise to about 4.5% or 4.6%, and inflation, now running at 5.5% by the Fed’s preferred measure, to the low 3% range by the end of 2023.
Getting inflation down faster than that would require “enormous” labor market pain that Daly said she is not willing to inflict.
(Reporting by Ann Saphir; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Paul Simao)
