Charles Evans, Interview: London School of Economics

“In the time that I’ve been at the bank, there used to be two pieces of advice which were mandates, which is, as an economist going out and speaking in public, there are two questions you don’t answer, what are interest rates going to do or when do you raise them? The other one is what do you think about the value of the dollar and should action be taken to change that?”

“So the question is so careful and specific, I can’t answer it. If the question is where are interest rates headed in the US, I would say we published our summary of economic projections just last week and a very large part of our 19 member committee submitted projections that assumed that the federal funds rate next year would increase to 4.5 to 4.75. The median of 19 participants said it would be 4.5 to 4.75. If you kind of look at the general pattern, I think it’s pretty clear that everybody has in mind a continued increase until we get to that point. I’d say like March 2023 we’ll be at that point. The clustering of those … I said the median, but the clustering is so narrow. It’s really pretty much a consensus view on that. “