a senior federal reserve official tapped for the number two position at the us central bank said wednesday that pausing interestrate hikes would give the fed time to weigh additional economic data skipping a rate hike at a coming meeting would allow the committee to see more data before making decisions about the extent of additional policy firming fed governor philip jefferson told a conference in washington in prepared remarks the federal reserve has raised interestrates 10 times since it began an aggressive campaign to tackle inflation and bring it back down to its longrun target of two percent fed officials are now divided on the best path forward ahead of another interestrate decision to be announced on june 14 with some in favor of continuing to hike and others coming out in support of a pause jefferson added that a decision to hold our policy rate constant at a coming meeting should not be interpreted to mean that we have reached the peak rate for this cycle suggesting he did not think the fed was necessarily done with interestrate hikes going forward with two weeks before the next rate decision is announced futures traders now assign a greaterthan 60 percent chance that the fed will follow through with another interestrate hike on june 14 according to data from cme group