2 Fed officials favor keeping key rate at peak through 2023

WASHINGTON (AP) — Two Federal Reserve officials said Monday that they favor raising the Fed's key rate to roughly 5% or more and keeping it at its peak through next year — longer than many on Wall Street have expected.

John Williams, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, who is among a core group of officials around Chair Jerome Powell, said in a speech to the Economic Club of New York that the central bank has “more work to do” to reduce inflation closer to its 2% target.

And James Bullard, president of the St. Louis Fed, suggested that financial markets are underestimating the likelihood the Fed will have to be more aggressive in its fight against the worst inflation bout in four decades.

The Fed has raised its benchmark short-term rate six times this year, to a range of 3.75% to 4%, with each of the last four hikes being a historically large three-quarters of a point. The central bank is expected to raise rates by an additional half-point when it next meets in mid-December. Though that would represent a reduction in the size of its rate hikes, Fed officials have stressed that they expect to keep their key rate at a historically high level well into the future.

Because the Fed's benchmark rate influences many consumer and business loans, its aggressive series of hikes have made most loans throughout the economy sharply more expensive. That has been particularly true of mortgage rates, which have risen dramatically over the past year and have severely crimped home sales.

On Wednesday, Powell is scheduled to address the Fed's policies and their effects on the job market in a speech in Washington.

In an interview with Marketwatch, Bullard suggested that the speed of the Fed's rate hikes isn't as important as the ultimate level of its benchmark rate, which...