As I’m sure you all already know, the Federal Open Market Committee decided last week to raise the federal funds rate by 75 basis points, to a range of 2¼ to 2½ percent. I will share my reasoning for supporting this increase and why I support continued increases until inflation is on a consistent path to significantly decline.
I will then touch on the current federal regulatory climate and the Fed’s agenda for supervision. Inflation continued to climb in June, reaching 9.1 percent as measured by the consumer price index. This is yet another concerningly high reading, and it set another 40-year record high despite the expectation of many forecasters that inflation had peaked earlier in the year.