Federal Reserve Vice Chair Lael Brainard said expectations for half-percentage-point increases in interest rates this month and next were reasonable, and saw no case for pausing the central bank’s tightening campaign afterward.
“From where I sit today, market pricing for 50 basis points, potentially in June and July, from the data we have in hand today, seems like a reasonable path,” Brainard said Thursday in an interview with CNBC. “Right now it’s very hard to see the case for a pause. We’ve still got a lot of work to do to get inflation down to our 2% target.”