In an interview with Reuters on Wednesday, San Francisco Federal Reserve President Mary Daly was asked about how inflation has affected her daily life. Daly responded by saying that in her position, with her “having enough,” she does not feel the pain of inflation anymore. Of course, Twitter ran abuzz with the quote.
But, that’s not all the Fed official said, apparently. The interview, which streamed live over Twitter Spaces, runs about 30 minutes long. In much of it, Daly talked about her goal of bringing down the inflation rate to its pre-pandemic level of 2%, and this part was left out of much of the social media conversations about the interview.
Her answer starts at the 17-minute mark of the interview. She says, “you know I have to say that I live…I don’t feel the pain of inflation anymore. I see prices rising, but I have enough that I can make substitutions, that I can do things. So I’m not immune to gas prices rising, food prices rising. I sometimes balk at the price of things. But I don’t find myself in a space where I have to make tradeoffs, because I have enough, and many, many Americans have enough.”
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And then Daly says, “I recognize what it feels like when you don’t have that situation when you live so close to the edge of your income that rising prices actually force real tradeoffs.”
“So in my daily life, I see rising prices and I’m fine because I have a sufficient income to make those trade-offs. But for other people, that’s not the case. And those are the people that this is so important for,” she said, pertaining to lowering inflation.
Unlike Daly who is believed to earn over US$400,000 a year, many, many Americans are feeling the pain of rising prices. On Tuesday in a separate interview, she told CNBC that “the number of people who can’t afford this week what they paid for with ease six months ago just means our work is far from done.”
She is among many Federal Reserve officials calling for the central bank to push interest rates a lot higher and leave them high for a while to tame the worst inflation that the United States has seen since November 1981.
Inflation is currently at a 9.1% annual rate. The central bank has hiked up its benchmark interest rate four times, by a total of 2.25 percentage points so far this year.
Information for this briefing was found via Twitter and the companies and sources mentioned. The author has no securities or affiliations related to this organization. Not a recommendation to buy or sell. Always do additional research and consult a professional before purchasing a security. The author holds no licenses.
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