If your finances are reeling🃏 from high interest rates on credit cards, auto loans, and mortgages, a key driver of those rates may have reached its peak, according to a Federal Reserve official.

The Federal Reserve shouldn’t raise its influential fed funds rate above the 22-year high where it’s been since July, Patrick Harker, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia and a voting member of the central bank’s policy committee, said Monday. Instead, the Fed should be patient and let today’s high interest rates do their job of slowing the economy and putting a lid on 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:inflation, he said.

“We are at the point where we can hold rates where they are,” Harke꧂r said in a speech to the Mortgage 🌼Bankers Association in Philadelphia, according to prepared remarks.

Harker was speaking to an audience that has been hit especially hard by the Fed’s campaign of anti-inflation rate hikes that began in March 2022. The Fed raised its benchmark interest rate 11 times to a range of 5.25% to 5.50% from the near-zero level that had been held during the pandemic in an effort to restrain ra🃏mpant inflation. 

The rate hikes put upward pressure on mortgage rates, with the average rate offered for a 30-year mortgage 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:hitting 7.49%, its high✅est siღnce 2000 last week, according to Freddie Mac.

Higher rates have all but paralyzed the housing market, 澳洲幸运5官方开奖🐽结果体彩网:pushing home affordability out of reach for most would-be buyers—especially first-time ones. Rates have discouraged many homeowners💝 with locked-in low rates from selling. 

Harker acknowledged those realities in his remarks, noting that community bankers and other people he talked to over the summer frequently brought up the effect high rates were having on the housing mar🅺ket.

“The impact of rising 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:mortgage rates was something that took front and center in nearly every conversation,” he said. “In fact, the climate could be crystalized in seven words, which one of those contacts said 🉐to me recently: ‘There are no first-time home buyers.’”

Mortgage rates are heavily influenced, though not completely determined by, the Fed’s benchmark interest rate. So the Fed declining to raise its rate again would reduce the upward pressure on mortgag🅰e rates. 

Several Fed officials who vote on monetary policy said last week they 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:favored holding the rate steady. However,🔯 several emphasized the possibility of more rate hikes if inflation doesn’t stay on a downward trajectory.

The fed funds rate also influences interest rates for credit cards, business loans, 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:auto loans and all kinds of credit. The current high rates are intended to discourage borrowing and spending and to allow supply and demand ๊to r⛦ebalance, cooling inflation. 

Harker said he was encouraged that price increases have slowed down recently. The Fed’s preferred measure of inflation was running at a 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:3.5% increase over the year as oܫf August, down significantly from its 7.1% peak in June 2022, though not yet to the Fed’s goal 🐻of a 2% yearly inflation rate.

Traders and economis🔜ts think odds are good the Fed has hiked for the last time, and that the Fed’s next move—likely months away—will be to cut rates rather than raise them. 

Markets are pricing a 67% chance the Fed won’t raise rates again this year by its last 2023 meeting on Dec. 13, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch tool, which forecasts rate hikes based on fed futures trading data. Economists polled by The Wall Street Journal last month generally expected the Fed won’t raise rates again, according to a survey of 64 forecasters released Sunday.