WASHINGTON—Federal Reserve policymakers concluded last month that they would accelerate their tightening of credit if inflation failed to slow in the coming months.
Most officials agreed that faster interest rate hikes would be needed “if inflation does not move down” as the Fed’s policymaking committee expects, according to the minutes of the central bank’s late January policy meeting, which were released Wednesday.
Fed officials are expected to raise their benchmark short-term rate several times this year beginning in March. But economists have increasingly suggested that the Fed has waited too long to unleash its inflation-fighting tools. A number of Fed officials have acknowledged recently that inflation has proved worse than they expected. And the minutes of the January meeting noted that officials “remarked that recent inflation readings had continued to significantly exceed the longer-run goal and elevated inflation was persisting longer than they had anticipated.”
Fed officials have sent conflicting signals since the government released an inflation report last week that showed prices rising faster than expected.
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