(MENAFN) A senior Federal Reserve official suggested on Wednesday that the US central bank should reconsider its approach to interest rate cuts in light of "disappointing" inflation data. The official recommended either scaling back or postponing the planned interest rate cuts in response to this economic indicator.
"In my view, it is appropriate to reduce the overall number of rate cuts or push them further into the future in response to the recent data," Fed Governor Christopher Waller informed a conference in New York.
After rapidly raising interest rates and subsequently maintaining them at a 23-year high to address escalating inflation, the Federal Reserve has recently shifted its focus to deliberating the timing of interest rate reductions.
During its latest rate decision, policymakers reaffirmed their forecast of three interest rate cuts this year, despite a recent monthly increase in inflation. However, they opted to keep the Fed's key lending rate unchanged at this time.
"We made a lot of headway in reducing inflation in the past year or so, although the readings in the past two months have been disappointing," Waller stated.
The senior Federal Reserve official emphasized that both overall and so-called "core" inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, "rounded to a 0.4 percent increase for the month of February, which is obviously not progress toward our inflation goal," he declared, indicating Fed's long-term inflation objective of two percent.
"Shorter-term inflation measures are now telling me that progress has slowed and may have stalled. But we will need more data to know that," he further mentioned.
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