Monetary policy

The Federal Reserve is committed to cooling inflation and needs to raise interest rates to a little above 4% to ease demand, Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank President Loretta Mester said.

St. Louis Fed Bank President James Bullard said he favors a strategy of "front-loading" big interest-rate hikes, and he wants to end the year at 3.75% to 4%, while his Richmond counterpart, Thomas Barkin, said the central bank was committed to lowering inflation and a recession could happen.

The report from Senate Homeland Security Committee ranking member Rob Portman, R-Ohio, details China's campaign to infiltrate the Federal Reserve. But even amid rising tensions between the U.S. and China, response to the report has been muted.

Federal Reserve officials said they want strong evidence that the hottest inflation in four decades is on a sustainable downward path before declaring victory in their fight against it.

The day after the Federal Open Market Committee's next meeting we will analyze the increase and the signals about what rate hikes may be coming.

Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis President Neel Kashkari said the central bank is committed to doing what’s necessary to bring down demand in order to reach policy makers’ 2% long-term inflation goal, a target that remains far off.

Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers said he was concerned the Federal Reserve is still engaging in “wishful thinking” about how much it will take to bring inflation down from four-decade highs.

The Federal Reserve’s Inspector General said Chair Jerome Powell and former Vice Chair Richard Clarida’s trading activity had not broken any laws or rules, but the probe into the former heads of the Dallas and Boston regional Fed banks remained open.

Waller is the first Fed policy maker to explicitly express openness to an increase larger than 75 basis points at the July meeting.

Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta President Raphael Bostic said “everything is in play” for policy action after data showed that U.S. inflation accelerated again to a fresh four-decade high last month.