While speaking at a monetary and trade conference in Philadelphia, Patrick Harker, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, said that he was expecting one rate hike at most this year and possibly one more in 2020, as reported by Reuters.
Commenting on the latest inflation reading, Harker said it would take more data to convince him that weak inflation requires adjustment to monetary policy. “Q1 GDP reading was a pleasant surprise’ but possible that drag usually seen in 1st quarter will show up in 2nd quarter,” Harker noted and added that he was expecting the GDP to expand by “a bit above 2%” in 2019 and about 2% in 2020 while seeing the unemployment rate bottoming out at 3.5%.
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