Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Friday reiterated a message he has sounded in recent weeks: While the Fed expects to cut interest rates this year, it won't be ready to do so until it sees more good inflation readings' and is more confident that annual price increases are falling toward its 2 per cent target. Speaking at a conference at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, Powell said he still expected "inflation to come down on a sometimes bumpy path to 2 per cent". But the central bank's policymakers, he said, need to see further evidence before they would cut rates for the first time since inflation shot to a four-decade peak two years ago. The Fed responded to that bout of inflation by aggressively raising its benchmark rate beginning in March 2022. Eventually, it would raise its key rate 11 times to a 23-year high of around 5.4 per cent. The resulting higher borrowing costs helped bring inflation down from a peak of 9.1 per cent in June 2022 to 3.2 per cent last .