Jerome Powell sheds light on FOMC’s pause decision

Fed Chair Jerome Powell explained the decision to keep the policy rate, federal funds rate, unchanged at the range of 5.25-5.5% and responded to questions in the post-meeting press conference.

Quotes from Post FOMC meeting press conference

“It’s not likely we will hike further.”

“Policymakers are thinking, talking about when it will be appropriate to cut rates.”

“We are seeing strong growth that appears to be moderation and inflation making real progress.”

“We still have a ways to go.”

“No one is declaring victory, that would be premature.”

“We are not guaranteed of progress, so moving carefully in assessment of if we need to do more.”

“The question of when it will be appropriate to cut rates is coming into view.”

” I have always felt there was a possibility economy could avert recession while inflation came down, and so far that’s what we are seeing.”

“That said, this result is not guaranteed.”

“We think we have done enough on rates but we are not fully confident in that view yet.”

“Fair to say there is a lot of uncertainty still going forward.”

“We will look at the totality of data when making policy decisions.”

“We are very focused on not making the mistake of keeping rates too high too long.”

“Both mandates are more in balance now.”

“We will be looking hard at what’s happening with demand.”

“We haven’t worked out if we will follow a threshold-based path for cutting rates.”

“We have seen real progress on core inflation.”

“We’ve seen reasonable progress in non-housing services inflation.”

“Reason you wouldn’t wait to 2% inflation to cut rates is it would be too late.”

“You need to reduce restriction on economy well before 2%.”

“At some point you will run out of supply-side help, and then it gets harder.”

“We are not talking about altering the pace of QT.”

“Balance sheet is working pretty much as expected.”

“At a certain point, reverse repo facility levels out and reserves will come down.”