Boston Federal Reserve Chair Susan Collins confident the Fed can tame inflation without doing too much damage to jobs.
“By raising rates, we aim to slow the economy and bring labor demand into better balance with supply,” Collins said in a speech prepared for a Boston Fed conference on the labor market. “Intent is not a significant downturn. But restoring price stability remains the current imperative and it is clear that there is still work to be done”.
A series of rate hikes took the central bank’s overnight lending rate to a range of 3.75% to 4%, and virtually every other Fed official said they expected further hikes.
Collins stressed the importance of reducing inflation and acknowledged that the Fed’s moves could come at a price. Collins is a voting member of the Federal Open Market Committee which sets rates. The next meeting will be December 13-14, when it is largely expected to raise the rate by 0.5%.