St. Louis Fed President James Bullard said he’d favor successive rate hikes at the upcoming March, May and June meetings, rather than a 50bps hike in March. “The point of this is to get better positioned right now and in coming months, and then we will be able to assess, at that point, whether we need to do more or not,” he said.

“We are going to be have to be more nimble, faster, better at reacting to inflation data and other developments as we go through this year,” Bullard said. “It’s going to be a more data-dependent environment.”

Bullard added he’d like to start the balance sheet runnoff in Q2, and “that the runoff can be faster than it was last time around.” “We are cognizant of the inflation issue, we’re moving on the policy rate, but we’re also going to move on the balance sheet so we’re not that far from reaching neutral if you are willing to consider both of those,” he said

Philadelphia Fed President Patrick Harker said he would be “supportive of a 25 basis point increase in March.” But he’s “a little less convinced of” a 50 bps hike right now. He added, “if inflation stays where it is now, and continues to start to come down, I don’t see a 50 basis point increase.”

“Right now, I think four 25 basis point increases this year is appropriate,” Harker said. “But there’s a lot of risk here,” including the risk that inflation is worse than expected, or that it eases faster than Fed officials expect.

Richmond Fed President Thomas Barkin said yesterday, “as I talk to participants in the economy, what I hear is they actually want us to do something now about inflation. They’d like us to get back to at least a normal interest-rate posture and not be simulating more demand on top of normal levels. So, I don’t hear much resistance to that.”

“I’d like us to be better positioned,” Barkin said. “Better positioned is somewhere closer to neutral, certainly, than we are now and I think the pace of that just depends on the pace of inflation.”