Debate over whether U.S. interest rates are high enough deepened among Federal Reserve officials this week, and may be stoked further after a key survey showed a jump in consumers' inflation expectations, Reuters reported.
"There are ... important upside risks to inflation that are on my mind, and I think there's also uncertainties about how restrictive policy is and whether it's sufficiently restrictive" to return inflation to the U.S. central bank's 2% target, Dallas Fed President Lorie Logan said at a Louisiana Bankers Association conference in New Orleans.
"I think it's just too early to think about cutting rates ... I think I need to see some of these uncertainties resolved about the path that we're on, and we need to remain very flexible," Logan said, though she did not directly address whether she feels the Fed may need to again raise its benchmark policy rate from the 5.25%-5.50% range that has been maintained since July.
In on appearance on CNBC, Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari said he's in a "wait-and-see mode" in regards to what's next for central bank policy and the Fed can stay at current rates "as long as needed" to bring inflation down. But he added there is a "high" bar to concluding that higher rates are needed to cool inflation.
Many U.S. central bank officials, including Fed Chair Jerome Powell, have said they still think further rate hikes will prove unnecessary.
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