Top officials at the Federal Reserve are sharply divided over where interest rates should go next, with several policymakers speaking out Friday following a controversial decision to cut rates earlier this week.

The comments came just two days after the Fed lowered its benchmark interest rate by a quarter percentage point on Wednesday. That marked the third straight meeting with a rate cut, but the decision faced pushback from within the central bank as officials worry about inflation that refuses to fully go away.

Two Fed officials who voted against Wednesday’s rate cut explained their reasoning Friday. Austan Goolsbee, who leads the Chicago Fed, and Jeff Schmid from the Kansas City Fed both said they disagreed with cutting rates at this time.

For Goolsbee, this was his first time voting against a Fed decision since he joined in 2023. He said officials should have waited to see more data before making another cut. The government shutdown in October and November delayed important economic reports, and some inflation numbers before the shutdown looked worrisome, he explained.

However, Goolsbee told CNBC later Friday morning that he actually expects more rate cuts in 2026 than most of his colleagues do. “I’m one of the most optimistic folks about how rates can go down in the coming year,” he said.

Hawks call for restrictive stance

Schmid took a harder line. He said inflation stays too high while the economy keeps growing and the job market, despite cooling down, remains mostly balanced. “I view the current stance of monetary policy as being only modestly, if at all, restrictive,” he said.

The debate will continue into next year with new voting members joining the rate-setting committee. Goolsbee and Schmid will lose their voting seats in 2026, but two officials who will gain votes also spoke Friday with different concerns.

Beth Hammack from the Cleveland Fed said at an event in Cincinnati that the central bank needs to keep rates high enough to push inflation down. “Right now, we’ve got policy that’s right around neutral,” she said. “I would prefer to be on a slightly more restrictive stance.”

According to Cryptopolitan’s live coverage, when the Fed released its projections Wednesday, six out of 19 policymakers said they would have kept rates where they were instead of cutting them. Since only 12 officials get to vote each year, and just two actually voted against the cut, some analysts called these higher rate projections “silent dissents.”

Anna Paulson from the Philadelphia Fed, who will also get a vote next year alongside Hammack, focused on different worries. She was the only official speaking on Friday who stressed concerns about the labour market rather than inflation.

“On net, I am still a little more concerned about labor market weakness than about upside risks to inflation,” Paulson said Friday at an event hosted by the Delaware State Chamber of Commerce. “That’s partly because I see a decent chance that inflation will come down as we go through next year.”

Fed moves quickly to reappoint regional leaders

In separate news, the Fed moved faster than expected to reappoint its regional leaders, easing worries that allies of Donald Trump might try to block them from keeping their jobs.

The Fed board said Thursday it approved reappointing the 11 regional presidents who want to stay in their roles. The vote happens every five years and was supposed to take place before the end of February.

The early timing matters because regional Fed presidents have taken the toughest stance on fighting inflation, even as Trump and his advisers have pushed for aggressive rate cuts. This raised concerns that Trump supporters on the Fed board might prevent some regional leaders from continuing.

The reappointment vote received support from all board members, including Trump ally Stephen Miran and Christopher Waller and Michelle Bowman, who were both appointed during Trump’s first term.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has criticized the power held by regional presidents. Earlier this week, he indicated the administration would push for changes requiring new regional Fed presidents to live in their district for three years before taking the job.

Regional Fed heads do not need presidential nomination or Senate approval, unlike Fed governors. Each regional Fed’s board of directors handles their appointments. The last reappointment vote happened in January 2021.

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