“I think [it] is a close call,” Jon Faust, previously a senior advisor to Fed Chair Jerome Powell, told Timiraos. “You can make a very good case for 50,” said Esther George, president of the Kansas City Federal Reserve for more than a decade until last year. She noted that the Fed moved quickly to tighten policy above the “neutral” rate, so it might make sense for the central bank to move just as quickly to ease.