Two U.S. Federal Reserve officials responded to softening inflation data by saying it doesn’t change the U.S. central bank’s path toward even higher interest rates this year and next.
Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari, who prior to the pandemic was the central bank’s most dovish policy maker, said Wednesday that he wants the Fed’s benchmark interest rate at 3.9% by the end of this year and at 4.4% by the end of 2023.
"I haven’t seen anything that changes that,” Kashkari said, responding to a question about a Labor Department report published earlier that showed consumer prices rose 8.5% from a year earlier in July. The print was slightly less than the 9.1% increase in the prior month that marked the highest inflation rate in four decades.
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