Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco President Mary Daly said it’s too soon for policymakers to say they have done enough to return US inflation to their target.
(Bloomberg) — Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco President Mary Daly said it’s too soon for policymakers to say they have done enough to return US inflation to their target.
“It’s really too early to say that we’ve declared victory on inflation,” she said on CNBC on Thursday. While data on consumer prices out Wednesday “is very positive,” she said she’s in a “wait-and-see mode on that, because I remain resolute to bring inflation down to 2%.”
Officials are expected to raise rates by a quarter percentage point at their meeting this month after pausing their tightening campaign in June while at the same time indicating that two more increases were likely this year. The slowdown in the pace of hikes came as inflation cooled from a high reached last year.
“While we’ve put over 500 basis points of tightening in the system over a rapid period of time, we still have an economy that has a lot of momentum,” Daly said. “This is why we continue to say we’re going to keep working on rate hikes until we’re sure that inflation is on a path to come down to 2%.”
Data on the consumer price index for June, released earlier this week, showed price increases slowed again but remain above the central bank’s target.
The so-called core measure of the CPI — which excludes volatile food and energy prices — advanced 4.8% from a year earlier, data out Wednesday showed. That was the smallest increase since late 2021 and could give the Fed room to again pause rate increases after its July meeting if the trend continues, economists say.
Daly emphasized that policymakers are making decisions on a meeting-by-meeting basis, and noted that she wants to keep her options open.
(Updates with comment from Daly in fourth paragraph.)
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