Wednesday marked Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s 49th press conference since he assumed the role six years ago. His lengthy tenure showed more than usual.
Powell maintained a straight face throughout most of the briefing, which lasted the usual hour or so. But at times it seemed he was perhaps itching to head for the door.
Here are five moments that stood out:
A reporter asked Powell to provide an update on the central bank’s efforts to potentially develop a digital dollar that would function similarly to cryptocurrency in that there would be no physical version. “I think we’ve been pretty transparent on this, but I will try harder,” Powell responded.
He then proceeded to give the reporter a more lengthy response but asserted that it was “wrong” to say the central bank was working on a digital dollar in a secret lab and they’re “going to spring it on Congress in the right moment.”
Another reporter asked the chair if he was looking for complete unanimity among officials on the rate-setting committee before cutting interest rates. “People do dissent. It’s something that happens. Life goes on. And it’s not a problem — we’ve always had dissents,” Powell replied.
He got a room full of economics reporters to break out into laughter for a brief moment with his response to a question on whether he’d like to “put the genie back in the bottle” to a time when the central bank was less transparent. “Of course… not,” Powell said.
Fed watchers treat every word Powell says like it’s coming straight from the Bible. So naturally when he said the Fed was looking to slow the pace of selling securities “fairly soon” a reporter wanted to know what that meant. But Powell had little to add. “Fairly soon [are] words we use to mean fairly soon,” he said.
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