MNI BRIEF: Fed's Rate Path Is To Normal, Around 2% - Williams

New York Fed President John Williams on Friday said interest rates are likely on a path to around 2%, while declining to lay out if he thinks the first hike will be in March as other Fed officials have suggested.

"It's really not so much, is it so many rate increases this year or next year? It's really about just moving interest rates back up to that over the next year or two, moving to that level at least in the base case," Williams told reporters after remarks at a Council on Foreign Relations event.

The neutral interest rate in real terms was between zero and 0.5% just prior to the onset of the pandemic, he said. Early data about the underlying drivers of the natural rate of interest since then don't appear yet to have changed that, including around demographics globally, he said.