A senior Federal Reserve official said that the latest price data show inflation is still too high to warrant an easing of monetary policy and may even require further interest rate hikes
The remarks deliver a counterpoint to growing market expectations for a so-called Fed pivot.
Michelle Bowman, who sits on the Fed’s Board of Governors and is a voting member of the central bank’s rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), made the remarks at a symposium on financial system construction in Germany.
Bowman said that the latest consumer price index (CPI) figures showed insufficient progress in the Fed’s fight to lower price pressures. They showed that inflation in April inched down in annual terms from 5.0 to 4.9 percent but shot up fourfold in monthly terms from 0.1 to 0.4 percent….