Federal Reserve’s Williams says monetary policy in good place, must be data dependent

FEDERAL Reserve Bank of New York President John Williams said US monetary policy is “in a good place,” but officials will need to parse through data to decide on how to proceed on interest rates. 

“We’ve got policy in a good place, but we’re going to need to continue to be data-dependent,” Williams said on Thursday during a moderated discussion with Bloomberg TV reporter Michael McKee in New York.

The New York Fed chief said policy is restrictive and is having the desired effects of bringing demand and supply more into balance and easing inflation. 

“We’ll have to keep watching the data carefully analysing all of that and really asking ourselves the question: is this sufficiently restrictive,” he said. “Do we need to maybe raise rates again to make sure that we’re keeping that steady progress in terms of shrinking imbalances in the labour market and bring inflation back down?” BLOOMBERG