Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco President John Williams said his outlook hasn’t changed: he still expects three or four rate hikes and the beginning of reducing the Fed balance sheet to begin later this year.
Data has “been consistent with what we’ve been seeing,” Williams told reporters after the Shadow Open Market Committee meeting. The employment report “didn’t fundamentally change my views.”
Commenting on how the market wasn’t pricing in the last rate hike until after several Fed officials spoke about raising rates, Williams noted, “that’s one of the challenges we face. The market is struggling to know what we’re going to do next. They’re waiting for us to say, ‘It’s coming.’ If you don’t talk about it, they think we’re not going to raise rates.”
