On Wednesday’s broadcast of Bloomberg’s “Balance of Power,” New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) stated that the Federal Reserve doesn’t have any “other choice but to be aggressive” with hiking interest rates in order to control inflation and that inflation has been caused by “factors that are beyond our control, whether it’s COVID relief or a war in Europe,” which means the Fed has to “do a Paul Volcker here and get out ahead of this.”
Murphy stated that the recent rate hikes by the Federal Reserve have made the state’s borrowing costs go up, “although, we’ve been very opportunistic over the past five years to defease and pay down a lot of debt and a lot of debt avoidance. So, it is clearly — I’m far more concerned about the impact at somebody’s kitchen table than I am right now on our balance sheet, and I don’t think the Fed has any choice. These are factors that are beyond our control, whether it’s COVID relief or a war in Europe, there’s no other choice but to be aggressive and do a Paul Volcker here and get out ahead of this.”
Murphy added that while he thinks the rate hikes will hurt, they need to be done and people are feeling “enormous pain at that kitchen table, largely due to affordability.”
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