WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Federal Reserve can stick to half point interest rate hikes for the next two to three meetings then assess how the economy and inflation are responding before deciding whether further rises are needed, the Atlanta Fed president said.
The half point increase approved by the Fed last week “is already a pretty aggressive move. I don’t think we need to be moving even more aggressively,” Raphael Bostic said in comments to Bloomberg on Monday that appear to rule out a faster three-quarter point hike.
“I think we can stay at this pace and this cadence and really see how the markets evolve … We are going to move a couple times, maybe two, maybe three times, see how the economy responds, see if inflation continues to move closer to our 2% target, then we can take a pause and see how things are going.”
(Reporting by Howard Schneider; Editing by Edmund Blair)