Prudent to wait until December to hike again, Fed's Harker says
In an interview with the Financial Times, the president of the Federal Reserve bank of Philadelphia, Patrick Harker, said it would be "prudent" for the US central bank to defer its next interest rate hike until December, instead of tightening at its September meeting.
However, he advocated starting to wind down the US central bank's balance sheet when rate-setters next met in September.
Harker was a voting member of the Federal Open Market Committee in 2017.
His remarks came close on the heels of rather more guarded comments on the need for more immediate policy tightening from some of his FOMC colleagues over the previous sessions, includings the chiefs of the Dallas, Minneapolis and Chicago Fed banks.
On the other hand, in a speech in Amsterdam on 20 June Fed vice-president Stanley Fischer echoed Boston Fed boss Eric Rosengren, cautioning his audience not to forget the lessons of the 2007-09 housing crash in the States.
"The world as we know it cannot afford another pair of crises of the magnitude of the Great Recession and the Global Financial Crisis," he said.
The day before Fischer spoke, New York Fed chief William Dudley voiced confidence that inflation was set to rebound, prompted by a tight jobs market.
Dudley was also confident that the economic expansion was set to continue and argued for removing policy accomodation in a judicious manner.
Another member of the FOMC in 2017, Fed governor Jerome Powell, was due to speak later on Thursday.