“Inflation is coming down, but it’s very high,” the Federal Reserve chairman said in a second day of Congressional testimony.
| Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell stressed that policymakers had not yet made up their minds on the size of their interest-rate increase later this month and said it would hinge on incoming data on jobs and inflation.
and that it could move at a faster pace if economic data keeps coming in hot. But on Wednesday he diverged slightly from his prepared remarks to qualify the statement by adding that “no decision” had been made. “We have some potentially important data coming up,” he said, referencing the latest reading on US job openings, released as the testimony began on Wednesday, as well as February’s employment report due Friday and consumer price data scheduled for release March 14.Fed officials next meet March 21-22, when they will update quarterly economic forecasts. In December, they saw rates peaking around 5.1 per cent this year, according to their median projection.
“Slowing down the pace of rate hikes this year is a way for us to see more of those effects as they come in,” Powell said, referring to the impact of lags in the policy tightening already delivered.
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