As her 40-year central banking career comes to a close, Kansas City Federal Reserve President Esther George is advising her colleagues to stay tough in their efforts to stamp out runaway inflation.
George said Thursday that she thinks the Fed should raise its benchmark borrowing rate above 5% and keep it there until there are substantial signs that prices are stabilizing.
“Holding that until we get evidence that inflation is actually coming down is really the message we’re trying to put out there,” she told CNBC’s Steve Liesman during a “Squawk Box” interview. “I’ll be over 5% and I see staying there for some time, again until we get the signal that inflation is really convincingly starting to fall back toward our 2% goal.”
At the December Fed meeting, the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee voted to raise the fed funds rate half a percentage point to a range of 4.25%-4.5%.
Source: (CNBC)