As if rising gas prices weren't enough interest rates could be going up to this year.

From Marketplace, I'm Rebenishore in New York.

We got the notes from the Federal Reserve's last big interest rate meeting.

A lot of folks there think the economy might, could need higher interest rates this year to fight inflation.

That could be a tough pill to swallow for consumers.

Diane Swank is here to talk about it.

She's chief economist at KPMG.

Hi, Diane.

Good morning.

So we got the notes from the Fed's last meeting, and it turns out a majority of Fed officials are open to the idea

that interest rates might actually have to go up this year at least once. Why is that?

That's because what we're seeing is the underlying inflation numbers are not improving enough

to get us back to the Fed's target, let alone what anyone considers price stability.

To every day, consumers out there really just means that you're not thinking about tradeoffs

every day because some prices are going up and you need to maximize your budget and make

specific tradeoffs in your grocery car or in any other car that you're buying. And that's not

the case right now. Consumers

have prices front of mind, and that's the problem for the Federal Reserve. Now, with normal

inflation, you know, you raise interest rates, makes borrowing more expensive, the economy cools down,

inflation falls. But this inflation is from higher gas prices, and raising rates doesn't make gas cheaper. So why do it?

That's a good question. And what the problem is is, this is more than an energy shock. There is the

energy shock that we see first and that really is a summers. But it's a shock layered on top of

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