On Wednesday, when the Federal Reserve’s 12-member Open Markets Committee voted to hold interest rates steady amid fears of rising inflation, there were three members who dissented, voting for a rate hike as a cooling measure to help tamp down rising costs.
One was Dallas Fed president Lorie Logan, who issued a statement Friday explaining her vote.
“More than five years after the post-pandemic surge, prices have continued to rise too rapidly,” Logan wrote. “Every month of above-target inflation compounds the strain on the budgets of American families and businesses.”
Logan actually argued for a quarter-percentage-point rate hike and was joined in her dissent by the presidents of the Cleveland Fed and Minneapolis Fed.
President Donald Trump said as recently as this week that the Federal Reserve should lower interest rates.
“Rates should be lowered,” Trump said Monday, according to Reuters. “We have other countries that are paying less interest rates.”
The FOMC’s widely-watched policy vote came as affordability has emerged as an increasingly prominent issue in American public life. Even as corporate earnings and the stock market — driven largely by AI investment — have soared over the past year, increasing prices on everything from gasoline to restaurants to housing continue vexing non-wealthy Americans. One poll conducted by the Harris Group this month found that 95% of Americans believe the country is suffering an affordability crisis, and more than half believe the overall economy is getting worse. In North Texas — a region that’s ranked among the country’s fastest-growing for years in part because of its relative affordability — a recent survey found that one in five residents have considered leaving because of rising housing costs.
The country’s 12-month Personal Consumption Expenditures index — the inflation measure tracked by the Federal Reserve — registered at 3.7% in June, according to federal data. That was a moderate dip from May, when the figure was 4.1%, but still well above the Fed’s inflation target of 2%.
Logan argued it’s not coming down fast enough.
“Even after accounting for productivity gains and temporary supply shocks, inflation appears to be trending toward the mid-2’s, not all the way to 2%,” she wrote.
Logan also noted that the U.S. job market “is solid and perhaps strengthening a bit,” suggesting the job market could handle the impact of an interest rate hike. The Federal Reserve has a dual policy mandate focused on both achieving maximum employment and managing inflation.
The current federal funds target interest range, the Federal Reserve’s benchmark interest rate, is 3.5%-3.75%, which the central bank has left unchanged through 2026. Following the FOMC vote on Wednesday, Kevin Warsh, who assumed the role of Federal Reserve chair in May, alluded to the disagreement within the 12-member FOMC. It was the first time in nearly a decade that three members of the body dissented on an interest rate vote.
“I asked for a good family fight and I got one,” Warsh told reporters. “It was an active, robust discussion about what’s in the full range of what we can do and might want to do in the period ahead.”
As Federal Reserve chairman, Warsh has adopted a policy of offering little public insight into his decision-making and argued that markets should play a larger role in shaping monetary policy, prompting sharp criticism from many analysts.