Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta President Raphael Bostic is penciling in 2023 as the year the U.S. central bank will be able to start lifting its near zero short-term interest rate target range.
“I still think that, you know, 2023 is the time we’re going to start to be in the liftoff range, and that really hasn’t changed for me, even from December,” when the Fed last offered forecasts on its monetary policy and economic outlooks, Mr. Bostic said in an interview Tuesday with The Wall Street Journal.
For the Fed to lift rates, it will need to see “strong and robust” inflation for a sustained period, and “I just don’t have a lot of certainty that we’re going to see that very quickly,” Mr. Bostic, a voting member on the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee this year, said.
At last week’s committee meeting, the Fed held its short-term interest-rate target at between 0% and 0.25%, where it has been since the coronavirus pandemic struck the U.S. and global economies a year ago.
At the meeting, Fed officials also collectively maintained their forecast of no change in rates through their 2023 forecasting horizon. However, the so-called dot plot mapping officials’ views on the path of monetary policy showed some predicting some combination of rate rises starting next year.
