The Federal Reserve should take a break from raising interest rates, after moving them up at each of the last ten meetings, said Philadelphia Fed President Patrick Harker on Wednesday.
“I am in the camp increasingly coming into this meeting thinking that we really should skip, not pause, but skip an increase,” Harker said, during a discussion hosted by the OMFIF Economic and Monetary Policy Institute. “I am not saying that we are not going to continue to tighten, but I think we can take a bit of a skip for a meeting,” he added.“A decision to hold our policy rate constant at a coming meeting should not be interpreted to mean that we have reached the peak rate for this cycle,” he said in a speech Wednesday.
Harker said the May employment and consumer inflation reports, to be released before the June meeting, could change his mind.