(New York) The American Central Bank (Fed) is not ruling out the idea of raising its rates by half a percentage point if inflation remains high, said one of its officials, Raphael Bostic, in an interview at FinancialTimes.
Posted at 10:59
The institution signaled this week its intention to raise its key rates in March, noting the improvements on the employment front and high inflation which could persist.
Its chairman, Jerome Powell, declined to elaborate on the magnitude of the planned hike, saying only that the Fed would be “flexible” on the issue. It usually raises rates by a quarter of a percentage point.
In an interview granted Friday and published Saturday evening by the FinancialTimesthe chairman of the Federal Reserve of Atlanta branch, Raphael Bostic, asserted that “all options (were) on the table at every meeting” of the institution.
He still expects three quarter-point hikes by the end of the year.
But “if the data indicates that things have moved in such a way that a 50 basis point move is necessary or [serait] appropriate, then I could think about it,” he said.
He also stressed that he “would be comfortable” with the idea of making a decision “at each meeting”, thus suggesting that there could be a rate increase at each of the seven remaining meetings by the end of the year. end of the year.
Key Fed rates were lowered to a range of 0% to 0.25% in March 2020 in an attempt to mitigate the shock to the economy from the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.
With growth picking up again, the priority now for the Fed is to slow inflation, in particular by raising rates.