PALO ALTO, California (Reuters) – Richmond Federal Reserve Bank President Thomas Barkin said on Friday that he does not understand the case for pausing interest rates now, although delivering rate increases in smaller increments means that if the Fed does end up going too far it won’t have gone much too far.
Rates are currently restrictive, meaning that they are slowing the economy, but the Fed still needs to “feel” its way to a level of rates that is high enough to bring inflation back down, Barkin said at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.
(Reporting by Ann Saphir; Editing by Leslie Adler)
