WASHINGTON - A Federal Reserve official suggested Wednesday that the central bank is near the final stages of its tightening cycle after lifting key rates by two percentage points.
Richard Fisher, president of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank, said in an interview with CNBC television: "We`re clearly in the eighth inning of a tightening cycle."
The comments from Fisher, a member of the policymaking Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), provided further fuel to a stock and bond market rally.
"There is room to tighten a little bit further. Then we will see how we are standing against inflation," Fisher said.
The Fed has been on a path of gradual rate hikes, lifting its base rate by a quarter point in each of the past eight meetings.
Fisher repeated his baseball analogy in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. When asked if his comments mean that he would like the Fed to stop hiking rates in June, he said: "I think it speaks for itself."
In his Wall Street Journal interview, Fisher said he remains more concerned about higher inflation than he is about slower growth.
The Fed`s goal is to get rates to neutral, where it neither stimulates inflation nor discourages growth, Fisher said.
"We are not quite there yet. We are getting closer, and, as they say, when we get there, stay tuned," Fisher said.
"We have the ninth inning coming up at the end of June; we feel strongly we have been getting good, fast hard pitches coming right down the pipe," he said.
Fisher became the head of the Dallas Fed on April 4. He is a voting member of the FOMC this year.
06/01/2005 17:16 GMT