Fed officials have spent much of the first seven weeks of the year pushing back on market expectations for a rate cut at the central bank’s next policy meeting in March.
Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta President Raphael Bostic said there’s no rush to cut interest rates with the US labour market and economy still strong, and cautioned it’s not yet clear that inflation is heading sustainably to the central bank’s 2% target.
“The evidence from data, our surveys, and our outreach says that victory is not clearly in hand, and leaves me not yet comfortable that inflation is inexorably declining to our 2% objective,” Bostic said in a speech Thursday in New York. “That may be true for some time, even if the January CPI report turns out to be an aberration.”
