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The
Fed's current plan for half point increases is "a good benchmark
for now," Bullard said on Yahoo Finance. Large increases are
"not my base case ... I think we have a good plan in place,"
Bullard said.
The comments from one of the Fed's most vocal advocates of
faster rate hikes show how tightly U.S. central bankers have
coalesced around the plan outlined by Fed Chair Jerome Powell
last week to raise rates by half a point at the next two Fed
meetings, and take stock along the way of how inflation is
behaving and what more might need to be done.
Bullard, however, repeated on Wednesday that he feels the Fed
will need to keep moving in those half-point increments for the
remainder of 2022, pushing the federal funds rate to a range of
between 3.25% and 3.5% by the end of the year.
That's higher than the level many other Fed officials have
projected so far.
But Bullard said data could push the Fed in either direction
still.
"I think it is more state contingent ... We want to take it one
meeting at a time. It is possible inflation could moderate a
lot," he said. It is possible the real economy could take twists
and turns ... We don't want to be promising today what we will
do in December."
(Reporting by Howard Schneider; Editing by Chris Reese and
Sandra Maler)
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