Boston Fed's Susan Collins Says Leaning Toward 25 Bps Rate Hike At Next Policy Meeting: NYT

Susan M. Collins, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, reportedly said she was leaning toward a 25 bps interest rate hike at the next FOMC meeting – a slowing down in the pace of rate hike compared to the large increases adopted by the central bank throughout last year in its fight against inflation.

“I think 25 or 50 would be reasonable; I’d lean at this stage to 25, but it’s very data-dependent,” Collins told The New York Times on Wednesday. “Adjusting slowly gives more time to assess the incoming data before we make each decision, as we get close to where we’re going to hold. Smaller changes give us more flexibility,” she added.

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Collins is one of the Federal Reserve’s 12 regional bank presidents and one of its 19 policymakers. It is noteworthy that she does not have a formal vote on rate changes this year, but will take part in deliberations as the decision is made, the report indicated.

Major Wall Street indices closed in the green on Wednesday as optimism over a decline in inflation gained momentum ahead of the release of consumer price index data on Thursday. The SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust SPY closed 1.26% higher while the Invesco QQQ Trust Series 1 QQQ gained 1.73%.

Rate Target: The Boston Fed President said she was in favor of raising interest rates to just above 5% this year, potentially in three quarter-point moves in February, March and May.

“If we’ve gone to slower, more judicious rate increases, it could take us three rate increases to get there — and then holding through the end of 2023, that still seems like a reasonable outlook to me,” she said according to the report.

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Photo via Brookings Institution on Flickr