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Fed’s Daly Says Strong Economy Can Tolerate 50-Basis-Point Hikes -Breaking

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© Bloomberg. Mary Daly

(Bloomberg) — Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco President Mary Daly backed raising interest rates by a half-percentage point at each of the central bank’s next two meetings, adding that she’d like to see financial conditions tighten further.

“Going up in 50-basis-point increments to me makes quite a bit of sense and there’s no reason right now that I see in the economy to pause on doing that in the next couple of meetings,” Daly said in an interview Thursday with Bloomberg News.

She added that a 75-basis-point increase, which has been the subject of speculation as an option to curb surging inflation, is “not a primary consideration.” Daly is not a voter this year on the policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee.

At their earlier meeting, policy makers raised the federal funds target rates by half a point to 0.75 to 1.1%. This was the Fed’s first major increase in federal funds target rate since 2000. The Fed is trying to curb the 40-year trend of the greatest consumer price increases.

“I expect financial conditions to tighten even more as we march through these rate increase and remove stimulus from the economy,” Daly said. “I think we’ve made a good start on them already, but I would like to see continued tightening of financial conditions — that would be consistent with bringing supply and demand back into balance.”

On Thursday, the 30-year fixed rate mortgage rate rose by 5.3% to 5.3%. This is its highest level since 2009.

Daly said the Fed’s benchmark rate should rise to neutral — the level at which policy is neither speeding up nor slowing down the economy — by the end of the year, and sees that lying around 2.5%.

Economists argue that a trajectory with steep rate hikes could lead to a downturn in the economy. Daly claimed that the US is strong and should be capable of enduring this.

“The economy has a lot of momentum,” Daly said. “Adjusting the policy rate, removing support from the economy, bringing us up to neutral when things are this good, doesn’t worry me. It’s sort of helping get the economy back into sustainable growth, sustainable paths, and that’s actually going to be beneficial to the economy in the longer run.”

(Updates with additional details starting in the eighth paragraph.

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