(Reuters] – Friday’s Federal Reserve Policy hawks, two of whom are the most vocal in their criticism of high inflation have reaffirmed the belief that the U.S. central banking has not done enough to combat it. The Fed began increasing interest rates in March but a tightening financial environment began before that.

“How far off the curve would we be if forward guidance was used to view rate rises as beginning in September 2021?” Christopher Waller, Fed governor, noted the recent rise in yields of the Treasury two-year notes that started last fall.

Waller stated that “what may seem like a policy mistake to others was actually a suitable policy based on their views about the health of the labour market.” He made these remarks in preparation for delivering remarks at the Stanford University conference titled “How monetary policies got behind the curve”.

James Bullard, the President of St. Louis Fed took note, in prepared remarks for delivery at conference, of the rise of yield on the Treasury two-year note. He considered it a measure of near-term Fed’s policy rate expectations. Critically, the Fed raised this range to 0.75 to 1% earlier in the week. It is an amount that critics claim is too low for fighting inflation at three times its 2% target.

Bullard stated that, despite the fact that this week’s two-year Treasury yield was at 2.7%, the Fed “is not as far behind the curve” as some critics believe. However, Bullard indicated, “but (the Fed would) still need to increase the policy rate in order to ratify forward guidance.”

Bullard and Waller were the first Fed policymakers to demand that easy monetary policies be immediately ended and interest rates raised quickly.