Tom Barkin, Interview: CNBC

Regarding Future Rate Hikes: “Well, we’ll have a lot of information before December, two more CPI’s, a PCE, another jobs report, a bunch of demand indicators, so I’m not sure I know exactly what we’re going to do in December.  But, I think, the way I think about it is, we had our foot on the gas six or eight months ago.  We were very, very accommodative and it made sense to move as rapidly as you could to take your foot off the gas and that’s where we’ve been.  I think now real rates are positive pretty much across the curve and I think you could credibly say that we have our foot on the brake. And, I think when you have your foot on the brake, you just think about steering in a very different way.  You pump the brakes sometimes.  You act a little bit more deliberately.  I’m ready to do that and I think the implication of that is probably a slower pace of rate increases, a longer pace of rate increases and potentially a higher end point.”

Regarding the Terminal Rate: “Well, I think about it in terms of what happens to inflation.  The faster that inflation settles down to levels that I’m comfortable with, the less far I think we need to go.  But, if it were to persist and continue, I think we’d have to continue to take action to make sure that expectations stay in line and inflation comes back toward our target.  So, to me, it’s very dependent on what happens to inflation.”