Fed Powell speaking at Washington Economic Club
Fed Powell is talking at the Economic Club of Washington:
- Economy performed really well over the last couple of years
- This year expected economy to slow and inflation to continue to make progress. Something like that is happening
- labor market no tighter than before the pandemic
- 2Q of inflation does represent progress with three better readings
- Now that inflation is coming down will look at both mandates.
- If we did see unexpected weakening in labor market, that would merit reaction from us
- Not going to send any signal on any particular meeting
- Will make decisions based on evolving data and outlook
- The Feds undertaking is to make decisions on data and only on data, not politics.
- If the Fed waited for inflation to get a 2% to cut it has waited too long.
- We want to have greater confidence that inflation is moving sustainably down toward 2%
- What increases their confidence is better inflation data, we have been seeing that lately.
- Fed takes confidentiality seriously
- Inflation coming out of the pandemic was out of the goods sector helped by the supply chain.
- We saw that goods inflation as temporary
- We overestimated how quickly the economy would return to normal.
