Fed’s Daly: Need 'more urgency' on rate hikes

San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank President Mary Daly crossed wires, via Reuters, during an extended speech towards early Thursday morning in Asia.

The Fed policymaker initially said, “(She) No longer believes that raising U.S. interest rates every other meeting and delaying a reduction in the Fed's balance sheet until later in the year is appropriate, given signs that inflation is broadening and workers are not charging back into the labor force.”

Also read: Fed's Daly: Rates will be moved up this year to a level more consistent with where the economy is

Additional comments

I do think having a little more urgency to moving interest rates up to a level that’s in line with what the economy needs today is important.

Raising rates just once a quarter, as the Fed did after the Great Recession, ‘To my mind doesn’t satisfy the moment.’

Has also pulled forward her preferred timing for starting to reduce the Fed's balance sheet.

Expects the Fed to begin raising rates in March and subsequent meetings by a quarter-of-a-percentage point at a time, but did not rule out bigger half-point hikes if needed.

All of our possibilities are on the table.

There will be more data on inflation and on jobs before the Fed's March policy meeting.

Doesn't believe there is a case for 'frontloading' the Fed's response to inflation, especially since healing supply chains may help slow price rises.

We need to get policy in line but we can’t be impatient about doing it all today.

Market reaction

EUR/USD remains more or less the same after the latest Fedspeak while being burdened due to the risk-off mood. The major currency pair was last seen flirting with the 1.1300, after declining 0.20% the previous day.

Read: EUR/USD falls sharply towards 1.1300 as Ukraine – Russia conflict escalates