US Fed Chair Powell Testifies

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said he believes inflation is receding, but isn’t yet confident that price gains are sustainably slowing to the central bank’s 2% goal. “I do have some confidence” that inflation is receding, the Fed chief told House lawmakers on his second day of testimony in Washington. “The question is: Are we sufficiently confident that it is moving sustainably down to 2%? And I’m not prepared to say that yet.” Powell said recent price readings have shown “modest further progress,” and “more good data” would ...

video The Federal Reserve faces a cooling job market as well as persistently high prices, Chair Jerome Powell said in testimony Tuesday to Congress, a shift in emphasis away from the Fed’s single-minded fight against inflation of the past two years that suggests it is moving closer to cutting interest rates. The Fed has made “considerable progress” toward its goal of defeating the worst inflation spike in four decades, Powell told the Senate Banking Committee. “Inflation has eased notably” in the past two years, he added, though it ...

In Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell's written testimony on monetary policy to the US Senate, he talks a little more of two-way risk, but while the Fed is open to the possibility of rate cuts at some point, he emphasises that the data needs to be there to justify it. He acknowledges that first quarter data did not give them great confidence inflation was returning to target, but that "the most recent inflation readings, however, have shown some modest further progress, and more good data would strengthen our confidence that ...