St. Louis Fed President James Bullard told CNBC today, “we need to front-load more of our planned removal of accommodation than we would have previously. We’ve been surprised to the upside on inflation. This is a lot of inflation.”

“Our credibility is on the line here and we do have to react to the data,” he added. “However, I do think we can do it in a way that’s organized and not disruptive to markets.” Bullard added that Fed should raise interest rate by a full percent point by July. “I think my position is a good one, and I’ll try to convince my colleagues that it’s a good one,” he said.

Regarding the 7.5% consumer inflation rate in January, Bullard said, “my interpretation was not so much that report alone, but the last four reports taken in tandem have indicated that inflation is broadening and possibly accelerating in the U.S. economy,”

“The inflation that we’re seeing is very bad for low- and moderate-income households,” he said. “People are unhappy, consumer confidence is declining. This is not a good situation. We have to reassure people that we’re going to defend our inflation target and we’re going to get back to 2%.”

In a WSJ interview, Kansas City Fed Esther George said that with inflation at at 7.5% in January, and the benchmark interest a rate near zero, Fed’s policy is “out of sync”. But she said it’s too soon to say if Fed should hike by 50bps in March. She also hasn’t form a view on how much interest rate has to go up this year.

“What we have to do is be systematic,” George said. “It is always preferable to go gradual…Given where we are, the uncertainties around the pandemic effects and other things, I’d be hard-pressed to say we have got to get to neutral really fast.”

“If we get to March and the data says we should be talking about that [a half-point rate increase], I’m sure that will be in play, but I’m not sure that is the answer, per se, to how we get there,” George added.

She also dismissed the idea of holding an emergency FOMC meeting to raise interest rate. “I don’t know that I’d call the markets reacting to data an emergency here, because frankly, in my own forecast of looking where inflation was moving, the print was not a surprise,” she said.

San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly told CBS on Sunday, “it is obvious that we need to pull some of the accommodation out of the economy”. However, “history tells us with Fed policy that abrupt and aggressive action can actually have a destabilizing effect on the very growth and price stability that we’re trying to achieve,” she warned.

“What I would favor is moving in March and then watching, measuring, being very careful about what we see ahead of us — and then taking the next interest rate increase when it seems the best place to do that. And that could be in the next meeting or it could be a meeting away,” Daly said.