Good afternoon, everyone. To begin, id like to say a few words about paul volker who as you know passed away earlier this week. Paul volker served as Federal Reserve chair from 1979 to 1987. He accomplished many things during his long and distinguished career at the fed and elsewhere. Hes best known for leading the fight to tame the doubledigit inflation he inherited, laying the prosperity we enjoy today. But what is perhaps most admirable about him more than his accomplishments was his character. He believed that there was no higher calling than Public Service and he dedicated the lions share of his life to it. With courage, tenacity and integrity he pursued the policies he believed would benefit all americans. My colleagues and i continue to draw inspiration from his example. Turning to todays meeting, my colleagues and i decided to leave our rate unchanged after lowering it a total of 0. 75 . We based our decisions on judgment of how best to achieve the goals congress has given us,
Contemplates as the committee contemplates the future target range of the federal funds rate it will act as appropriate to expand the expansion the vote, 82. Two dissents Esther George of kansas city and Eric Rosengren of boston both wanted to keep rates unchanged. On the Economic Outlook, surprisingly the same from the month or months when they didnt cut rates. They say the labor market remains strong Economic Activity rising at a moderate rate. Unemployment remains slow. Household spending appears to have picked up Business Investment has been soft, thats the one negative. Inflation running below 2 , market based measures have remained low and survey based measures are little changed. Very much the same characterization and actually a little bit better than prior months when they didnt cut rates. The trick will be in the press conference which starts in about 29 minutes time. So far in terms of the power pirouette that needed to happen, what do you think . You know, i think its okay
introduced the fix nix ni the fix nics act to ensure all federal agencies accurately and entirely upload the conviction records on a timely basis. yes, this is the same senator chris murphy i m working with now to try to achieve a success here. we ve done it before, and i believe we can do it again. our bill was signed into law in march of 2018, and in the first three years 11 1/2 million more records were uploaded into the three national databases that the f.b.i. checks. the number of records in one of those databases increased by more than 30% alone. so i think i can say with assurance that what we did together in 2018 has saved lives, because if it kept a gun out of the hands of somebody who was already prohibited from getting a gun under current law, we will have saved a life, maybe even the life of the shooter. 60% of the gun deaths in america are suicides. but i know we ve saved at least those lives, and i think many others as well. but as the uvalde shooting demonstr
Stabilize. I will be that there is a limit below which oil prices are likely to rise. We look at Market Expectations, market forctations are stabilization. And then some gradual upward movement. I certainly grant that we have had a series of shocks, pushing them down. But we are not looking for them to revert back to the higher levels that they were at. Merely to stabilize. Would point out, you ask me, would we tolerate overshoots . For a number of years between 2004 and 2008 we had a series of increases in oil prices that for a series of years raised inflation above. Again, we didnt have a 2 and 2 objective then. We judge those increases to be transitory as well. Looking through them, we do monitor Inflation Expectations very carefully. If we saw in a meaningful way that Inflation Expectations were either moving up in a way that made them seem unanchored or. Own, that would be of concern we have called attention to some slight downward movements and some survey measures. We are watchi
That we eventually want to operate with a much smaller Balance Sheet than we have at present. The, that we would reduce the size of the Balance Sheet to essentially, whatever size we needed to manage Monetary Policy effective in, in effective and efficient way. Now a lot has changed since prefinancial crisis in terms of the Financial System and, we are studying, were engaging in project at this time. To consider whether a longrun operating framework should look like. So, i cant tell you exactly what size of Balance Sheet we will determine is the best to operate in an efficient and effective manner. It might be somewhat larger than the very tiny quantity of reserves that we had precrisis. We have not determined that. We have also said that we will, we expect to reduce the size of our Balance Sheet overtime by ceasing diminishing, ceasing entirely reinvestments and beyond that we havent given Additional Guidance other than to say the timing of reductions in reinvestment will depend on ec