- The Fed does have obligations to explain itself to public and congress
- Inflation is a social phenomenon, if they believe it will go up, it probably will
- We will be careful about changing policy until we have a lot more certainty
- We have time to make assessments on net effects of policy changes before we react
- When it comes to fiscal policy, it takes a long time for a bill to get through
There is nothing new in the Q&A so far and the interviewer is asking non-stop political questions. Powell basically had to straighten her out after the 10th political question and the crowd cheered him on.
- Increase of new business and people moving jobs have been factors in productivity growth
- You can argue generative AI will cause a huge boost of productivity, and others who don't say it will
- The history of technology is that it takes longer to show up in productivity but it's bigger
Finally onto rates:
- Policy is restrictive
- Can't say how restrictive it is though
- We've started process of cutting rates, moving to neutral
- Need to move patiently, carefully to neutral
- As we near plausible range of neutral, we may need to slow pace of what we are doing
- If the data let us, that seems like a smart thing to do
- CPI report was slightly higher than we would have liked but we'll tear into it
- I'll certainly serve to the end of my term and that's all I'm focused on (not what he plans afterwards)
