St. Louis Fed President James Bullard said he’d favor successive rate hikes at the upcoming March, May and June meetings, rather than a 50bps hike in March. “The point of this is to get better positioned right now and in coming months, and then we will be able to assess, at that point, whether we need to do more or not,” he said.
“We are going to be have to be more nimble, faster, better at reacting to inflation data and other developments as we go through this year,” Bullard said. “It’s going to be a more data-dependent environment.”
Bullard added he’d like to start the balance sheet runnoff in Q2, and “that the runoff can be faster than it was last time around.” “We are cognizant of the inflation issue, we’re moving on the policy rate, but we’re also going to move on the balance sheet so we’re not that far from reaching neutral if you are willing to consider both of those,” he said
