INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
By Christopher CondonFederal Reserve Bank of Kansas City President Esther George favors two additional interest-rate increases this year as
economy continues to gradually improve, adding that criticism by President Donald Trump will not influence the U.S
central bank.
“My own forecast is that it will be appropriate to raise rates a couple more times this year,” George told Kathleen Hays
in an interview on Bloomberg Television in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
Trump complained to wealthy Republican donors at a Hamptons fundraiser on
Friday that he expected Jerome Powell to be a cheap-money Fed chairman and instead the man he picked for the job had raised rates.
George
said she wasn’t feeling any political heat.
“I don’t feel personally that it impedes our ability to make decisions,” she said
“This committee is very focused on the mandate given to us by Congress to try to make decisions that are in the long-run interest of a
growing economy.”
George hosts the Kansas City Fed’s annual policy symposium in Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park and will get the
event formally underway with a dinner at 8 p.m
Powell headlines the conference with a speech at 10 a.m
Friday on monetary policy in a changing economy.
September HikeFed officials are getting ready to raise interest rates again next month amid
an intensifying debate on how much higher to go amid strong labor markets and robust growth, minutes of their July 31-Aug
1 meeting released in Washington on Wednesday showed
Investor expectations for a move next month are above 90 percent according to pricing in interest rate futures markets.
The U.S
economy expanded at a 4.1 percent pace in the second quarter and tracking indices from the New York and Atlanta Feds show it continues to
Unemployment is 3.9 percent, the lowest since 2000, and inflation measured by the Fed’s preferred price gauge rose 2.2 percent for the
year ending June.
George suggested the more difficult debates facing the Fed revolve around how far it will raise rates before at least
George said she estimated the so-called neutral rate -- the level at which the Fed’s policy rate neither drives nor restrains the economy
She wouldn’t say where she thought rates should level off.
