Chicago Fed President Charles Evans said yesterday, “I think that we’ve got a good plan in place. We could very well do 75 in September. My mind is not made up. I do know that we need to be increasing interest rates up to a substantially higher level than where they are now.”

“I think the precise path is less important than just constantly telling people, we’re on this path, this is what we’re going to do, inflation is job one, we’re going to handle this,” Evans said.

“Unemployment is 3.7% right now. I’m optimistic that we’re going to be able to navigate this and keep unemployment to about 4.5% by the time we’re done,” he said. “That would still be a pretty good outcome, although it will be costly for some.”

“I would prefer to find an appropriate spot to pause and monitor how things are going, rather than go much higher — potentially overshoot,” he said. “I wouldn’t say that I’m advocating sort of pausing at 3.5%, because I think 4 is more likely.”

Fed chair Jerome Powell said in a conference, “We need to act now, forthrightly, strongly as we have been doing (on inflation). My colleagues and I are strongly committed to this project and will keep at it.”

“Demand is very, very strong still in the labor market. We’re still printing new payroll job numbers at a high level, wages are running at elevated levels,” Powell said. “By our policy interventions, what we hope to achieve is a period of growth below trend, which will cause the labor market to get back into better balance, and that will bring wages back down to levels that are more consistent with 2 per cent inflation.”

“It is very important that inflation expectations remain anchored,” Powell said. “The longer that inflation remains well above target the greater the concern that the public will start to just naturally incorporate higher inflation into its economic decision making,. Our job is to make sure that doesn’t happen.”