- Inter-meeting data was broadly in line with our expectations
- CPI was a bit better than expectations
- We haven’t made any decisions about future meetings
- We’re looking for moderate growth, we’re looking for a better balance in supply and demand, particularly in labor market
- We get 2 more jobs and CPI reports before the Sept meeting
- It is certainly possible that we would hike in Sept, also possible we would hold
- June CPI is just one reading
The US dollar sold off on these first Q&A comments and the US dollar softened. The market may have been worried about particularly hawkish comments and saw these comments as not overly-hawkish.
- We will be looking at everything in deciding on what to do next, growth and inflation very closely but inflation in particular
- How do you balance the risks of doing too much or too little? I would say “we’re coming to a place” where there are challenges on both sides
- We need to see inflation is durably down
- We think core inflation is a better signal of where core inflation is going
- We want to see core inflation coming down
- There are reasons to see core coming down but it’s still quite elevated
- The historical record suggests softening in labor market conditions so that’s still the likely outcome
- The worst outcome for everyone would be to not deal with inflation and not get it done
- Whatever the short term costs of getting inflation down, they outweigh the longer-term costs of not getting the job done
- Monetary policy is restrictive, moreso today after today
- Inflation has proved, repeatedly, stronger than we and other forecasters expected
- Doesn’t expect end of Ukraine grain deal to have a material effect
Powell appeared to make an effort to keep a September high on the table but it’s priced at just 18%, which is the market saying that inflation won’t be hot and jobs might cool.