{"id":100734,"date":"2024-05-01T23:13:52","date_gmt":"2024-05-01T19:13:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/?p=100734"},"modified":"2024-05-01T23:16:14","modified_gmt":"2024-05-01T19:16:14","slug":"jerome-powell-speaks-on-policy-outlook-after-holding-policy-rate-steady","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/jerome-powell-speaks-on-policy-outlook-after-holding-policy-rate-steady\/05\/01\/market-updates\/","title":{"rendered":"Powell speaks on policy outlook after FOMC decision"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell explains 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.<br><br>In its policy statement, the Fed said that there has recently been a lack of further progress toward the 2% inflation target. Regarding the quantitative tightening strategy, the Fed noted that they will slow the decline of the balance sheet by cutting the Treasury redemption cap to $25 billion per month from $60 billion starting June 1.<br><br><strong>Key Quotes<br><\/strong><br>&#8220;The economic outlook is uncertain.&#8221;<br><br>&#8220;We do not expect it will be appropriate to cut rates until have greater confidence on inflation moving toward 2%.&#8221;<br><br>&#8220;So far this year, inflation readings have not given us that greater confidence.&#8221;<br><br>&#8220;Likely that gaining greater confidence will take longer than previously expected.&#8221;<br><br>&#8220;Reducing policy too soon or too much or too late or too little both have risks.&#8221;<br><br>&#8220;Policy is well positioned to deal with risks and uncertainties we face.&#8221;<br><br>&#8220;We will make decisions meeting by meeting.&#8221;<br><br>&#8220;Slowing pace of QT does not mean our balance sheet will shrink less than it would otherwise.&#8221;<br><br>&#8220;Slowing the pace of runoff will ensure a smooth transition for money markets.&#8221;<br><br>&#8220;The decision to slow runoff will reduce the possibility of money market stress.&#8221;<br><br>&#8220;I do think policy is restrictive and is weighing on demand.&#8221;<br><br>&#8220;You can see that with the labour market.&#8221;<br><br>&#8220;Saw evidence of that today in the JOLTS report.&#8221;<br><br>&#8220;Quits and hiring rates have normalized.&#8221;<br><br>&#8220;We believe over time policy is sufficiently restrictive to bring inflation back down to 2%.&#8221;<br><br>&#8220;The data will show if that&#8217;s so.&#8221;<br><br>&#8220;Unlikely that next policy rate move would be a hike.&#8221;<br><br>&#8220;Policy focus is on how long to keep policy restrictive.&#8221;<br><br>&#8220;To hike, we&#8217;d need to see evidence policy is not sufficiently restrictive &#8212; that&#8217;s not what we see.&#8221;<br><br>This section below was published at 18:00 GMT to cover the Federal Reserve&#8217;s policy announcements and the initial market reaction.<br><br>&#8220;Fed maintains mortgage-backed securities redemption cap at $35 billion per month, will reinvest excess MBS principal payments into Treasuries.&#8221;<br><br>&#8220;Risks to achieving employment and inflation goals have moved toward better balance over the past year.&#8221;<br><br>&#8220;Inflation has eased over the past year but remains elevated.&#8221;<br><br>&#8220;Fed vote in favor of policy was unanimous.&#8221;<br><br>Market reaction to Fed policy announcements<br>The US Dollar came under modest bearish pressure with the immediate reaction. At the time of press, the US Dollar Index was down 0.2% on the day at 106.08.<br><br>&#8220;Our decisions depend on incoming data.&#8221;<br><br>&#8220;We think policy is well positioned to address different paths the economy might take.&#8221;<br><br>&#8220;If inflation proves more persistent and labor market remains strong, then it could be appropriate to hold off on rate cuts.&#8221;<br><br>&#8220;But there are other paths which would point to rate cuts.&#8221;<br><br>&#8220;That would be if we gain greater confidence and unexpected weakening in labor market.&#8221;<br><br>&#8220;Data will have to answer question of if this is peak rate.&#8221;<br><br>&#8220;To reduce rates, we want to be confident inflation is moving down.&#8221;<br><br>&#8220;Incoming inflation data will be at the very heart of that decision.&#8221;<br><br>&#8220;Not obvious connection between easing in financial conditions and inflation.&#8221;<br><br>&#8220;Wouldn&#8217;t rule out that we could still have strong growth or labor market and inflation continue to fall.&#8221;<br><br>&#8220;We will probably have to see wage growth ease to more sustainable levels to reach inflation goal.&#8221;<br><br>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know how long it will take before we can cut rates.&#8221;<br><br>&#8220;We do need to take a signal from three worse-than-expected inflation readings.&#8221;<br><br>&#8220;Will take us longer to get ourselves sufficiently confident to change policy rate.&#8221;<br><br>&#8220;Since December, goods and housing inflation has been higher than expected.&#8221;<br><br>&#8220;My expectation is over the course of this year, inflation will move back down but my confidence in that is lower than it was before.&#8221;<br><br>&#8220;Looks like substantial lags in when lower market rents will turn up in the data.&#8221;<br><br>&#8220;Active tool of monetary policy is interest rates.&#8221;<br><br>&#8220;Plan to slow balance sheet runoff is aimed at making it smooth, avoiding market turmoil.&#8221;<br><br>&#8220;Balance sheet slowdown now is to ensure a smooth process and not market turmoil like last time.&#8221;<br><br>&#8220;Economy has been very hard for forecasters to predict.&#8221;<br><br>&#8220;There are paths to not cutting, and paths to cutting &#8212; it will depend on the data.&#8221;<br><br>&#8220;As inflation has come down to below 3%, the Fed&#8217;s employment goal comes back into focus.&#8221;<br><br>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know if inflation will fall enough, or won&#8217;t fall enough, to merit rate cuts.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell explains 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.In its policy statement, the Fed said that there has recently been a lack of further progress toward the 2% inflation target. Regarding the quantitative &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":63108,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,36],"tags":[6885,6987,7163,7822],"class_list":["post-100734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-forex-markets","category-market-updates","tag-fed","tag-inflation","tag-jerome-powell","tag-labour-market"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100734"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100734\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100748,"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100734\/revisions\/100748"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noortrends.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}