Fed Officials Stare Down Markets, Say Inflation Is Top Focus
WASHINGTON—U.S. Federal Reserve officials on Monday sloughed off rising volatility in global markets, from slumping U.S. stocks to currency turbulence abroad, and said their priority remained controlling domestic inflation.
“There are interactions there,” Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester said, noting that financial market volatility can affect investor decisions and the value of the dollar does impact the U.S. economy.
“But in terms of our goals, we are going to set our policy, taking into account the environment we are in, in order to get back to price stability here in the U.S,” Mester said after a hawkish speech at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in which she argued that it could be more costly to do too little to rein in inflation than to do too much….