Cleveland President Loretta Mester told Bloomberg TV yesterday, the June inflation report was “uniformly bad”. “There was no good news in that report at all,” she said. “We at the Fed have to be very deliberate and intentional about continuing on this path of raising our interest rate until we get and see convincing evidence that inflation has turned a corner.”

“Certainly the inflation report suggests that there’s no reason to say that a smaller rate increase than we did last time, right, because nothing moved in that direction,” she added.

Asked if a 100bps hike is appropriate this month, Mester said, “We’re going to have the meeting and we’re going to talk about what the appropriate path of policy is. We don’t have to make a decision today.”

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.”

Kansas City Fed President Esther George said, “I expect that further rate increases could put the federal funds rate in the neighborhood of 2% by August, a significant pace of change in policy settings”. Then, “evidence that inflation is clearly decelerating will inform judgments about further tightening.”

“The inflation we are now experiencing is obviously both too high and too broad to dismiss. The central bank’s job is to prevent persistent imbalances from feeding into inflation and unmooring inflation expectations,” she said. “By influencing interest rates, the Federal Reserve primarily affects the demand side of the imbalance. The evolution of its efforts alongside other factors will affect the course of monetary policy, requiring continuous and careful monitoring.”