Fed’s Powell: Economy performed really well over the last couple of years

Fed Powell is talking at the Economic Club of Washington:

• Economy performed really well over the last couple of years
• This year expected economy to slow and inflation to continue to make progress. Something like that is happening
• labor market no tighter than before the pandemic
• 2Q of inflation does represent progress with three better readings
• Now that inflation is coming down will look at both mandates.
• If we did see unexpected weakening in labor market, that would merit reaction from us
• Not going to send any signal on any particular meeting
• Will make decisions based on evolving data and outlook
• The Feds undertaking is to make decisions on data and only on data, not politics.
• If the Fed waited for inflation to get a 2% to cut it has waited too long.
• We want to have greater confidence that inflation is moving sustainably down toward 2%
• What increases their confidence is better inflation data, we have been seeing that lately.
• Fed takes confidentiality seriously
• Inflation coming out of the pandemic was out of the goods sector helped by the supply chain.
• We saw that goods inflation as temporary
• We overestimated how quickly the economy would return to normal.

This article was written by Greg Michalowski at www.forexlive.com.