San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly said yesterday that ” an expeditious march to neutral by the end of the year as a prudent path.” And it’s the “top priority” to move “purposefully to a more neutral stance that does not stimulate the economy”

“The case for a 50 basis-point adjustment is now complete,” she said after the speech. “The economy is resilient; it can handle these adjustments.” And, she’s “busy thinking about are three things: inflation, inflation, inflation.”

Nevertheless she also emphasized, ,”if we ease on the brakes by methodically removing accommodation and regularly assessing how much more is needed, we have a good chance of transitioning smoothly and gliding the economy to its long-run sustainable path,” she said.

As for the economy, she said, recession is one word, but it describes a whole range of outcomes. It can be a couple of quarters of a tiny bit below zero. That’s a very different beast than something like the financial crisis or the Volcker disinflation period.”

“That’s not something that I’m forecasting or something I think would derail the long-run expansion,” she added.

Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic told CNBC yesterday, “I think it’s really important that we get to neutral and do that in an expeditious way.”

“I really have us looking at one and three-quarters by the end of the year, but it could be slower depending on how the economy evolves and we do see greater weakening than I’m seeing in my baseline model,” he said.

“This is one reason why I’m reluctant to really declare that we want to go a long way beyond our neutral place, because that may be more hikes than are warranted given sort of the economic environment.”

Chicago Fed President Charles Evans said yesterday that he expected interest rate to be above neutral at 2.25-2.50% by the end of the year.

“That’s my expectation, when I see that, taking out special factors, I’m still left with 3 to 3.5% inflation” by the end of 2022, he said. “That’s not what we want. If we’re at a 2.5% inflation rate, I think we have more things to ponder there.”

“By December, we’re going to get more data on the micro aspects of the high inflation, price increases, how much is it broadening out,” Evans said. “By that time, we’re at neutral, and to the extent we don’t see it coming down, we’re going beyond neutral, absolutely.”

St. Louis Fed President James Bullard said yesterday, “we want to get to neutral expeditiously, I guess is the word of the day. I’ve even said we want to get above neutral as early as the third quarter and try to put further downward pressure on inflation at that point.”

As for the May FOMC meeting, “more than 50 basis points is not my base case at this point,” he said. “I wouldn’t rule it out, but it is not my base case here.”

Bullard also reiterated that he would like to see interest rate at 3.50% by the end of the year. “You can’t do it all at once, but I think it behooves us to get to that level by the end of the year,” he said.

New York Fed President John Williams told Bloomberg TV that a 50bps rate hike in May is a “reasonable option” because the “federal funds rate is very low”. He added, “we do need to move policy back to more neutral levels.”

“We need to really focus on bringing inflation down to our 2% longer-run goal, and to do that over the next few years. So, that is the number-one focus, and I say that because the economy is strong,” Williams said. “So I do think from a monetary policy point of view, it does make sense for us to move expeditiously towards more-normal levels of the federal funds rate.”

“I think the economy can withstand real interest rates at neutral or a bit above,” he said. “We’ve seen a dramatic, significant movement in yields and financial conditions over the past several months and that’s already positioning policy well to get supply and demand back into balance.”