Fed not ruling out continual rate increase

Fed Chair Jerome Powell reaffirmed his commitment to bringing inflation down, saying on Tuesday that he will support interest rate hikes until prices return to a healthy level.

“If that involves moving past broadly understood levels of neutral we won’t hesitate to do that,”said the central bank head to WSJ in an interview. “We will go until we feel we’re at a place where we can say financial conditions are in an appropriate place, we see inflation coming down.

The Fed hiked benchmark borrowing rates by half a percentage point earlier this month, the second hike in 2022, as inflation hovers around a 40-year high. Following that rise, Powell stated that comparable 50 basis point increases would be anticipated at subsequent sessions if economic conditions remained stable.

On Tuesday, he reiterated his commitment to bringing inflation closer to the Fed’s 2% target but warned that it would be difficult and could come at the expense of a 3.6 percent unemployment rate, which is just above the lowest since the late 1960s.