"Fed mouthpiece: Pressure for larger, faster interest rate hikes is approaching."

Wall Street Journal chief economics reporter Nick Timiraos, widely known as the "Fed’s mouthpiece," wrote in a recent article that the rebound in U.S. inflation is breaking the gradual pace of rate hikes the Federal Reserve had sought to maintain. Fed officials spent all of October trying to quash market expectations of consecutive rapid rate hikes in the near term, but the latest released data has not aligned with that effort. Data released Tuesday by the U.S. Department of Labor showed that the annualized increase in core Consumer Price Index (CPI), which excludes food and energy prices, hit 3.7% in the three months ending in October, up sharply from 1.6% in the three months ending in July. The report has further cemented market expectations that the Fed will raise interest rates at its December 8-9 policy meeting. The real debate has shifted from whether a rate hike is needed to how quickly monetary policy should be tightened. The article notes that the Fed now faces two options: continue with its previously planned pace of two to three more 25-basis-point rate hikes; or act faster, by implementing consecutive hikes or even a single 50-basis-point increase to deliberately cool economic activity and curb inflation. On Tuesday, remarks from multiple Fed officials indicated that the latter option is drawing more attention. The article states that the Fed’s core dilemma is now clear: persistent, broad-based inflation calls for the central bank to act faster, while cooling AI investment and tightening financial conditions raise the risk of over-tightening. Whether the December meeting will deliver a single 50-basis-point hike or two consecutive 25-basis-point increases will be a key test of the Fed’s policy trade-offs.