(Bloomberg) -- Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City President Esther George, who dissented last month against the US central bank’s jumbo 75 basis-point increase in interest rates, cautioned that rushing to tighten policy could backfire.
“Communicating the path for interest rates is likely far more consequential than the speed with which we get there,” she said Monday in the text of remarks prepared for delivery to the Mid-America Labor/Management Conference Lake Ozark, Missouri. “Moving interest rates too fast raises the prospect of oversteering.”
George, whose vote at the June meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee was the first dovish dissent of her career, said that she understood the desire to raise rates rapidly to dampen surging inflation but was concerned it could do more harm than good.
“This is already a historically swift pace of rate increases for households and businesses to adapt to, and more abrupt changes in interest rates could create strains, either in the economy or financial markets,” she said. “Along these lines, I find it remarkable that just four months after beginning to raise rates, there is growing discussion of recession risk, and some forecasts are predicting interest rate cuts as soon as next year.”
A majority of Fed officials have said they are open to raising rates by 75 basis points again when they meet July 26-27 and pricing in financial futures markets shows that investors fully expect them to deliver. But markets also show rates peaking around 3.4% in the first half of next year, which is below the Fed’s own forecasts, with modest cuts following before the end of 2023.
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