Federal Reserve Vice Chair Philip Jefferson Q&A now:
- Fed has not changed its approach to monetary policy
- Fed is always thinking about the balance of risks
- Our goal has been to bring inflation down without causing undue or a disorderly increase in the unemployment rate
- Performance of labour market gave us headroom to keep policy restrictive for a long period
- Size of September rate cut was timely
- Fed's rate cut was neither proactive or reactive
- Important not to focus on narrow measures of inflation, labor market
- need to look at totality of the data
- Fed aims to create economy with inflation at 2% and employment as high as possible
- if we do that, it will be possible for interest rates to be normalized
- Fed can't influence housing affordability directly
- takes time to bring inflation down
- have been making gradual but good progress in bringing down rate of housing inflation
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Again, Jefferson not really guiding on what is ahead for the Fed, apart from generic comments.
Earlier:
Fed Vice-chair Jefferson says will watch incoming data, making decision meeting by meeting
Philip Jefferson