San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly said in a blog post that “myriad factors are tempering labor supply at the moment”. However, ” there is no reason to expect those to be permanent or even highly persistent features of the labor market.”

She pointed to the “aftermath of the Great Recession” as the downturn “put millions of prime-age men and women out of work “. And, “many believed that this would never reverse”.

“But none of those factors proved to be binding,” she said, “As the economy improved, workers came off the sidelines. And year after year, the employment rate rose, eventually surpassing its pre-recession peak”.

“The lesson is simple: Americans want to work and it would be a mistake to assume otherwise,” She concluded.

Full blog post here.

Atlanta Fed Bank President Raphael Bostic said, 50bps hike in March was “not my preferred policy action.” He added, “I had three rate increases in mind. March is looking like the right time” to get that started. From there, however, “we are not on any set progression.”

“We are going to need to be thinking very carefully about how things are going, how the economy responds to our first moves,” Bostic said. “We are not set on any particular trajectory. The data will tell us what is happening.”

Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s Q&A in the Congressional Testimony was composed and balanced, while being upbeat as expected. Regarding the “hot” topic of flattening yield curve and recession, he didn’t reply directly. Instead, he acknowledged the there are a lot of discussions. But what matters is the yield at the long end as an indication of the so called neutral rate. Right now, 30 year yield is at around 2.96 after hitting as high as 3.247 earlier this year. 10 year yield is at around 2.85 after hitting as high as 3.115. So, 2.75-3.00% is probably the neutral rate to Powell, rather than 2.50-2.75%.

Regarding US trade policy, Powell didn’t comment directly as expected too. It should be reminded that Powell has already made his stance clear before. He doesn’t comment on policies he doesn’t make. And to guard the line of independence of Fed, he has to refrain from commenting on the administration’s policies too. Instead, he takes them as given.

Though, he was willing to talk about trade from “principles” perspective. And to him, countries that embraced free trade and low tariffs used to have better results and higher productivity. Countries that have been more protectionist “have done worse”.