The president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, James Bullard, on March 22 reiterated last week’s call for a more aggressive stance to combat the highest level of inflation in 40 years. Bullard said that U.S. monetary policy needs to be tightened sooner rather than later, by raising interest rates to above 3 percent by the end of the year. “The Fed needs to move aggressively to keep inflation under control,” said Bullard in an interview with Bloomberg. “We need to get to neutral at least so we’re not putting upward pressure on inflation during this period when we have much higher inflation than we’re used to in the U.S.” Bullard said that he estimates the neutral rate, which is the balanced rate that neither accelerates or suppresses inflation, at 2 percent. The Fed’s latest quarterly projections from March 16 show rates rising to 1.9 percent by the end of 2021 …