The No. 2 official at the U.S. central bank on Monday said policymakers are likely to soon slow down from the pace of interest rate hikes from the historically large increases seen since June.
“I think it will probably be appropriate soon to chose a slower pace of increases,” Brainard said in an interview with Bloomberg.
“We’ve done a lot,” Brainard added. The Federal Reserve has raised its policy rate almost 400 basis points since March, with four straight 0.75 percentage point hikes since the summer.
Yet Brainard seemed to shy away from any specifics about the likely terminal rate of this cycle of rate hikes.
Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said earlier this month that stubborn inflation suggested the Fed might need to raise rates next year to a slightly higher level than the 4.5%-4.75% range they had expected in September.
Exactly what the path of further rate hikes looks like is “hard to say,” Brainard said.
The Fed Vice Chairman said that the central bank was focused on potential harmful spillovers from the Fed’s rate hikes.
Stocks were mixed on Monday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
up slightly while the S&P 500 index
SPX,
was lower. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note
TMUBMUSD10Y,
was up to 3.87%.
This post was originally published on Market Watch
