Exclusive: Fed’s Harker Says Economy Close to Achieving Inflation Goal for Rate Hikes

The U.S. Federal Reserve may be close to meeting the inflation mandate set for raising interest rates, Philadelphia Fed Bank President Patrick Harker said, but it may be a year or longer before the central bank’s employment goal is met to allow for an actual rate increase. After running high this year because of the pandemic, inflation is likely to come down closer to the Fed’s 2 percent target over the next couple of years, Harker said in an interview with Reuters on Thursday. “We’ll see how it pans out over the next couple of months, but I think we’re pretty close to, or already have, achieved our inflation goal of running, averaging above 2 percent for a while so we can average over the longer-run 2 percent inflation,” Harker said. If the economy continues to improve as expected, it could potentially reach a point as soon as 2023 where …

Read More

RSS Feed | The Epoch Times