MNI BRIEF: Fed Has More Work To Do But Close to End -Barr

Federal Reserve Governor Michael Barr said Monday U.S. inflation remains far too high and the central bank has more work to do though it is getting close to ending its rate hiking cycle.

"We're quite attentive to bringing inflation down to our target of 2%. We've made a lot of progress in monetary policy," he said in Q&A after a speech on bank capital at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington. "At the last meeting, we skipped a meeting, and that's all part of -- as we get closer and closer to what we think is a sufficiently restrictive level -- that's part of positioning ourselves so that we can try and get to that target level in a careful way."

"We're close but I think you saw from our last meeting that many participants believe we need to do more," he said, referring to the FOMC's quarterly projections that showed the median policymaker saw the need for two more quarter-point rate hikes this year. "We're going to be very data-dependent, meeting by meeting looking at the data as it comes in. I would say we're close but we still have a bit of work to do."