Fed Waller: I really favor front-loading our rate hikes

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Fed Governor Christopher Waller told CNBC, “I really favor front-loading our rate hikes, that we need to do more withdrawal of accommodation now if we want to have an impact on inflation later this year and next year.”

“So in that sense, the way to front-load it is to pull some rate hikes forward, which would imply 50 basis points at one or multiple meetings in the near future,” he added.

“The data’s basically screaming at us to go 50, but the geopolitical events were telling you to go forward with caution,” he said. “So those two factors combined pushed me off of advocating for a 50-basis-point hike and supporting the 25-point hike that we enacted.”

Waller also said the quantitative tightening should start “in the next meeting or two.” “We’re in a different place than we were before,” he said. “We have a much bigger balance sheet, the economy’s in a much different position. Inflation is raging. So, we’re in a position where we could actually draw down a large amount of liquidity out of the system without really doing much damage.”