Powell: Policymakers made no decisions about future meetings in March

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

Key Statements:

“We want to see more data that gives us higher confidence on inflation moving down sustainably.”

“We made no decisions about future meetings today; will depend on data.”

“If there were a significant weakening in labor market, that would be a reason to start rate cuts.”

“I don’t think we know if rates are going to be higher in the longer run.”

“My instinct is rates won’t go back down to very low levels we saw before.”

“But there is tremendous uncertainty around that.”

“It is still likely in most people’s view that we will have rate cuts this year, but depends on data