Chicago Fed President Charles Evans said in a speech that “because inflation is not showing any meaningful sign of heading above 2 percent…I feel we have good capacity to wait and carefully take stock of the incoming data and other developments”. He added that “developments in the first half of 2019 will be very important for making this assessment of our future monetary policy actions,”
Though, he also reiterated that “if the downside risks dissipate and the fundamentals continue to be strong, I expect that eventually the fed funds rate will rise a touch above its neutral level.” And responding to the question of how many hikes, Evans said “three rate increases would be the short answer to your question”. But he also noted “timing is not at all important…whether we get there by the end of 2019 or the end of 2020”.
