Fed chair Jerome Powell said in a conference, “We need to act now, forthrightly, strongly as we have been doing (on inflation). My colleagues and I are strongly committed to this project and will keep at it.”
“Demand is very, very strong still in the labor market. We’re still printing new payroll job numbers at a high level, wages are running at elevated levels,” Powell said. “By our policy interventions, what we hope to achieve is a period of growth below trend, which will cause the labor market to get back into better balance, and that will bring wages back down to levels that are more consistent with 2 per cent inflation.”
“It is very important that inflation expectations remain anchored,” Powell said. “The longer that inflation remains well above target the greater the concern that the public will start to just naturally incorporate higher inflation into its economic decision making,. Our job is to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
