st louis fed president james bullard who has been a leading voice of aggressive rate hikes this year on wednesday said he was content with a plan to raise interest rates by 50 basis points at each of the next two meetings “we’ve got a plan in place which is 50 basis points at the last may 4 meeting and at future meetings as well” bullard said in an interview on yahoo finance “i think that is a good benchmark for now” he said read dissecting recent fed speak sees broad agreement on next two rate hikes bullard said he would like to see the fed’s policy rate get up to 35 by the end of the year the fed has to go above “neutral” to push down inflation he said last week the fed hiked rates by 50 basis points the largest increase in 20 years pushing up its policy rate to a range of 0751 bullard’s comments in late april that the fed shouldn’t take an even larger 75basispoint rate hike off the table roiled financial markets asked if a 75basispoint hike could be warranted down the road bullard said wednesday it was “not my base case” “the committee based on public comments from my colleagues has coalesced around a plan of 50basispoints per meeting so i think we can proceed on that” he said the april cpi report was “hot” in terms of inflation but was not that different from what was expected the st louis fed president said “it’s not like we got a tremendous amount of information here although i would interpret it as indicating that inflation is broader and more persistent than many had thought” he said some fed watchers think that a 75basispoint hike could happen later this year read larger fed hikes could be on the table other economists think the fed may downshift this fall to more standard 25basispoint moves stocks fell on wednesday with the dow industrial average djia down for the fifth straight session the yield on the 10year treasury note tmubmusd10y slipped below 3