(Reuters) -San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank President Mary Daly said on Friday cooling inflation offers “relief” for Americans suffering from high prices, but that there are risks of higher inflation ahead. “The inflation number that printed today, that’s good relief for American consumers,” Daly said on Fox Business’ “Maria Bartiromo’s Wall Street,” referring to the […]
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Fed’s Daly: April PCE inflation is a ‘relief,’ but incomplete, Fox Business reports
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(Reuters) -San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank President Mary Daly said on Friday cooling inflation offers “relief” for Americans suffering from high prices, but that there are risks of higher inflation ahead.
“The inflation number that printed today, that’s good relief for American consumers,” Daly said on Fox Business’ “Maria Bartiromo’s Wall Street,” referring to the 2.1% rise in the personal consumption expenditure price index increase last month, the slowest annual increase in four years.
But the data is an “incomplete picture of what we have to look at as policymakers; we have to look forward, and there are risks,” she said.
She repeated her view that monetary policy is in a good place, and that she’s comfortable with two interest-rate cuts this year should the economy stay fundamentally strong and inflation continue to move down.
“We can actually move one way or another as the data unfolds, but you want to keep the policy rate modestly restrictive for now until we are sure that inflation is going to get to that 2%,” she said.
(Reporting by Ann Saphir; Editing by Sandra Maler)