The Federal Reserve is doing all it can to avoid "collateral damage" from raising interest rates, but rate increases are a "brute-force tool" that can act as a "hammer" on the economy, says Fed Governor Christopher Waller.

"When you have to use a brute-force tool, sometimes there's some collateral damage that happens," Waller said Monday at a 'Fed Listens' event in Nashville that was also broadcast virtually. "We're trying to do this in a way that there's not much of it, but we can't tailor policy."

Fed officials raised rates by a quarter-point last month, to a target range of 0.25 percent to 0.5 percent, and signaled they expect to lift rates to 1.9 percent by the end of 2022 and 2.8 percent by the end of next year, according to their median forecast.

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