Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said the Fed will likely continue to raise interest rates in the near future to combat high inflation.
While inflation has dropped significantly over the past few months, it’s still more than double the Fed’s annual target of 2%.
“I think it’s too early to claim victory or think we’ve actually achieved this,” Mr. Powell said at a news conference. “Unfinished work.”
Powell noted that the Fed continues to err on the side of caution with inflation. That means the central bank would rather hurt the economy too much to reduce inflation than stop raising interest rates too soon and cause inflation to rise again.
“I continued to think that it was very difficult to manage the risk of doing too little and discovered that after six or 12 months, we were actually close to our goal but not getting the work done,” Powell said. “We have no incentive or desire to over-tighten, but if we feel we’ve gone too far… we have the tools to address that.”
