Fed Chair Jerome Powell said in an interview that “what we were actively considering, and this is just a factual recitation of what happened at the meeting, was a 50-basis point increase… if the economy performs about as expected, that it would be appropriate for there to be additional 50-basis point increases at the next two meetings”.

Powell also said that a “soft landing”, getting back to 2% inflation while keeping the labor market strong, is “quite challenging to accomplish that right now”. Unemployment is “very, very low”, the labor market’s “extremely tight”, and inflation is “very high”.

“What we can control is demand, we can’t really affect supply with our policies. And supply is a big part of the story, here. But more than that, there are huge events, geopolitical events going on around the world, that are going to play a very important role in the economy in the next year or so. So the question whether we can execute a soft landing or not, it may actually depend on factors that we don’t control,” he explained.

Full interview here.

San Francisco Federal Reserve President Mary Daly said yesterday she’d like to Would like to see continued tightening of financial conditions to help bring down inflation. Yet, 75bps rate hike is “not a primary consideration”.

“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,” she added.

In a Yahoo Finance interview, St. Louis Fed President James Bullard said that a 75bps rate hike is “not my base case”, and he gave a nod to the 50bps per meeting plan.

“We’ve got a good plan in place and the committee is, based on public comments anyway from my colleagues, has coalesced around a plan of 50 basis points per meeting. So I think we can proceed on that,” he said.

Bullard added that whether there would be 50bps hike at each of the upcoming meeting, to bring interest rate to 3.5% by year end, would be data-dependent. “It’s possible inflation could moderate a lot. It’s possible the real economy could take twists and turns. And so I don’t think we want to be promising today what we’re going to do in December,” he said.

Full interview here.

Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic said yesterday, “we are going to get our policy rate certainly to a neutral space where we are no longer providing accommodation. If inflation stays at high levels or levels that are too high — by too high, it’s really not moving back towards our 2% target — then I am going to be supporting moving more.”

“We moved our policy rate 25 basis points and the 30 year (mortgage) moved 2 percentage points. That is tremendous responsiveness,” Bostic also noted. “The moves that we have seen in rates and in yields are a sign that the markets still believe the Fed has credibility. They have said what we are going to do and they have priced in us doing them … That is an important dimension in the marketplace.”

Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester told Reuters, “I would need to see monthly numbers coming down in a compelling way before I would want to conclude we could now rest” on raising interest rates.

“The risks to inflation are skewed to the upside and the cost of allowing that inflation to continue is high,” she said, an argument for the Fed “doing more upfront rather than waiting.”

“I don’t think it (inflation) will get back to 2% next year. But it will be well on its way, in the range of two and half percent but moving in the right direction,” she said. “And given where the economy is and all the factors affecting inflation that are outside of our realm, that is acceptable to me.”

Fed Governor Christopher Waller said yesterday, “It’s time to raise rates now when the economy can take it. Front-load it, get it done, and then we can judge how the economy is proceeding later, and if we have to do more, we’re going to do more.”

“The labor market is strong. The economy is doing so well,” he said. “This is the time to hit it if you think there’s going to be any kind of negative reaction, because the economy can take it.”