(Bloomberg) — Federal Reserve officials argued for faster policy removal amid rising inflation. They added to the messages delivered earlier in the week by Chair Jerome Powell.

“I certainly would be supportive of a committee decision to move the end of the taper forward from where people had been expecting it in June,” Governor Randal Quarles, who steps down from the Fed later this month, said Thursday in response to a moderator’s questions after a farewell speech.

Powell advised lawmakers this week to speed up their taper at the upcoming meeting of bond buyers in order for it to be completed a few more months before originally scheduled. Powell warned that Covid-19, a new version of the drug, could impact the outlook on both inflation and employment. However, he also noted that elevated prices have raised the risk of high unemployment.

The chair’s obvious signal on a potential policy move was unusual just two weeks before a meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee — he’d usually avoid front-running any decision — but his colleagues are already lining up in public support.

Quarles’ remarks chimed with comments by Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic and and San Francisco’s Mary Daly, who reiterated their view it might be appropriate to scale back Fed asset purchases at a faster pace. Loretta Mester from Cleveland Fed was similar in her comments during Wednesday’s interview with Bloomberg Television.

On Friday, the November payroll report will give central bankers an update about the state of the labour market. Bloomberg polled economists to predict that unemployment will fall to 4.5%, while 548,000 additional jobs were created by employers.

When policy makers meet December 14-15, they will be weighing that data as well as a new look at consumer prices. They will also debate speeding the taper. The decision to end bond buying at $15 billion per month was made in November. They are on track for wrapping up the process by mid-2022.

Mester indicated that she supported ending it either in the first quarter, or in the early part of the second. Bostic stated that it would be a good idea for the Fed to end the taper by the second quarter. 

Officials will update their quarterly economic forecasts and their projections of interest rates at their meeting.

Bostic stated that inflation could continue to rise longer than anticipated next year and the central bank might need to move forward when it raises interest rates to near zero. According to September forecasts, central banks were equally divided over whether rates should be raised next year or by 2023.

“I just saw an OECD projection this morning that suggested that inflation in the U.S. could be above 4% for the year of 2022,” he said, referring to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. “If it is at that kind of level, I think there is going to be a good case to be made that we should be pulling forward more interest-rate increases and perhaps do even more than the one I have penciled in.” He said that he favored a “slow and steady” pace of increases.

Daly, speaking separately, said that the debate about pulling forward liftoff was “certainly something that I would anticipate we could see and have some of them do more in 2022.”

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