San Francisco Federal Reserve President Mary Daly said November 6 that she expects additional interest-rate increases will be needed to bring inflation down, while leaving the timing and size of any move undecided.
Daly described the latest employment report as good news and said a solid labor market gives the central bank room to complete its inflation work. She also said wage growth was not booming and that she wanted greater confidence about the inflation outlook.
Her comments described her own policy assessment. They did not announce a Federal Open Market Committee decision or commit the central bank to a particular increase at its next meeting.
Daly supported leaving rates unchanged at the previous meeting because of uncertainty. She said policymakers should collect more information and proceed deliberately, with a more gradual approach when the economic path is unclear.
The remarks came during a televised interview Friday afternoon, as investors reassessed technology-company valuations and expectations for demand growth driven by artificial intelligence.
Daly characterized the technology-stock repricing as painful but orderly. She said a slower pace of AI-related demand growth could matter for the economic outlook, while indicating that businesses remained cautiously optimistic.
She also pointed to services inflation as an area where progress had been weaker than expected. Her assessment linked a resilient employment backdrop with an inflation problem that she did not consider finished.
The combination leaves the policy outlook conditional: Daly expects more tightening may be necessary, but she said the central bank needs to weigh incoming information and global volatility before deciding how far or how quickly to move.
Sources: Reuters via Yahoo Finance — November 6 Daly Interview Report: https://finance.yahoo.com/economy/policy/articles/daly-says-fed-rate-hike-183207313.html FXStreet — November 6 Daly Interview Remarks: https://www.fxstreet.com/news/feds-daly-says-jobs-data-gives-room-for-tightening-policy-202611061845