What does the Federal Reserve really want? We have three hardcore regional central bank presidents talking Tuesday: Cleveland Fed’s Loretta Mester, Kansas City Fed’s Esther George, and St. Louis Fed’s James Bullard. We can bet that they will be one-upping each other about how high they want to take fed funds, the overnight bank lending rate. It’s a little bit strange after we got our first bit of good consumer price index (CPI) and producer price index (PPI) news to expect them to be as harsh as ever. They seem to want to ignore anything that’s succeeded since the Fed’s rate increase cycle began back in March. |
