Not spooked by anything happening at Federal Reserve and dow, nasdaq and s p at records at the moment after the Federal Reserve held rates stead i did for fifth meeting in the row and fed chair Jerome Powell answering questions for reporters. Lets go back there live. Early parts of the Pandemic Recovery have mostly been resolved. Youre seeing high job growth, youre seeing big increases in supply. Youre seeing strong wage growth but wage growth is gradually moderating down to more sustainable levels in many, many respects and the things are returning more to their state in 2019, which we can think of normal for this purpose. Thats job openings and quits and surveys of workers and businesses are interesting on this and how tight is the how easy to find a job and how easy it is to find a worker. Those have both those surveys have both come down. The labor market is in good shape. You know, you do see things like the low hiring rate. And people made the argument that if layoffs were to increase that would mean that the net would be fairly quick increases in unemployment. Thats something were watching and not seeing it. Of course initial claims are very, very low and if anything tracked very closely and when i say unexpected weakening of the labor market and expect the Unemployment Rate to, the forecast moving up to what we see as longer unsustainable level and thats just a peoples forecast and something thats unexpected and thats where ill leave it though. Reporter Steve Matthews with bloomburg. You mentioned at beginning of the press conference that the committee thought it might be appropriate to slow the pace of asset runoff fairly soon. Im wondering is, when you say fairly soon, does the Committee Meet about this again in may in a decision could be reach that had soon and was wondering it you describe the can she be of what the committee is discussing at 95 billion of caps right now would that be cut about in half or something in that nature . Thank you. So that is what were discussing essentially is not discussing many other Balance Sheet issues and well discuss in due course and what were really looking at is slowing the pace of runoff and not much in nbs but in treasuries and talking about going to a lower pace and i dont want to give you a specific number and havent had an agreement or decision and thats the idea. And thats what were looking at. And the in terms of timing, i said fairly soon. I wouldnt want to try and be more specific than that and you get the idea. The idea is this is in our longer run plans and we may be able to get to lower level and wed avoid the kind of frictions that can happen. Liquidity is not evenly distributed in the system and there can be times in the aggregate reserves are ample and abundant and parts that are not ample, there can be stress and can cause you to prematurely stop the process to avoid and it would be hard to restart we think. Something like that happened in 19 perhaps. Were looking at what would be a good time and structure and, you know, fairly soon is words that we use to mean fairly soon. And will there be a discussion about returning to all treasuries Balance Sheet at some point . Our longer run goal is to return to a Balance Sheet thats mostly treasuries. I expect once were through this, well come back to the other issues about composition and maturity and revisit and its not urgent right now and we want to get this decision made first and then we can when the time is right come back to the other issues. Reporter hi, victoria with politico. Can you talk about the outlook of the Banking Sector might impact the Balance Sheet plans s and deposits shrinking and seeing turbulence . Well be watching carefully but one of the reasons were slowing down, we will soon enough is we want to avoid any kind of that turbulence and not thinking about Banking Sector per se but we had some indicators and the last time. This is our second time in doing this, and i think well be paying a lot of attention to the things that started to happen and that foreshadowed what eventually happened at the end of that tightening cycle where we wound up in a short reserve situation and dont want to do that again. Now theres a better sense of what are the indicators and not so much in the Banking System as around for example where federal funds is trading relative to the administered rates. Where secured rates are relative to the administered rates and those sorts of things. Well always be watching the Banking System for similar signs though. Reporter is it also because youre not sure exactly how the reserves applied will react once the overnight repo facility drops near at zero . Well, i think we broadly think that once the overnight repo stabilizes either at zero or close to zero that as the Balance Sheet shrinks, we should expect and reserves decline pretty close to dollar for dollar with that. Thats what we think. Reporter hi, jay powell. Jean young with market news. I want to ask about the Balance Sheet. Will you you said that starting to taper sooner could get to, get you to a smaller Balance Sheet size and does that mean you dont have to make a decision on when to end qt at this point and will you be setting up the process for deciding that sooner or will you wait until were close to the end . Sort of ironic that by going lower you can get further and the idea is that with a smoother transition, you wont youll run much less risk of kind of liquidity problems, which can grow into shocks and which can cause you to stop the process prematurely. So thats where in terms of how it ends, were going to be monitoring carefully money Market Conditions and asking ourselves what theyre telling us about reservings. Are they right now wed characterize them as abun dent t and aiming were ample and little less than abundant. There isnt a, you know, theres not a dollar amount or percent of gdp where we think we have a really pretty clear understands that were going to be looking at what these, you know, whats happening in money markets and in particular a bunch of indicators tells us were getting close. Then you reach a point ultimately where you stop along the Balance Sheet to run off and you, from that point, theres another period which nonreserves, nonreserve liabilities grow organically like currency and that also shrinks reserves at very slow pace. Pace off slower pace of runoff and well have this soon and another time where you effectively hold the Balance Sheet and hold nonreserve liabilities to expand and then that ultimately brings you ideally in for, brings it into a nice easy landing at a level thats above what we think the lowest possible ample number would be. Were not trying for that. We want to have a cushion or buffer. We know that demand for reserves can be very volatile and we dont want to, again, find ourselves in a situation where theres not reserves and we have to turn around and buy assets and put reserves in the Banking System the way we did in 201 20. 2019 20. Reporter hi, Nancy Marshal again with marketplace. Chair powell, you said youre waiting to become more confident that inflation is getting to 2 goal before you cut rates. Sum up more specifically what data youre looking at that would give you that confidence . Sure, so were most importantly looking at the incoming inflation data and the contents of it and what theyre telling us. More confident that inflation is coming down towards 2 and well also be looking at all the other things that are happening in the economy and totality of the data including as we make that assessment and most important thing is inflation data coming in. Our target is not inflation but its wages. We would look to the fact that wanes are still coming in very strong, but theyve been wage increases that are saying wage increases have been quite strong but theyre gradually coming down to levels that are more sustainable overtime and thats what we want. We dont think that the inflation was not originally caused we think, i dont think by mostly by wages. That wasnt really the story but we think to get inflation back down to 2 sustain blizzard warnings, wed like to see continuing gradual movement of wage increases and high levels but back down to levels that are more sustainable over time. Reporter thank you, greg rob from market watch. Chair powell, could you say whether there were more officials that wanted to be care and feel go slower than about rates than were in the last meeting . Was there that sense of maybe its smart to wait . Thanks. Id put it this way. If you look at incoming inflation data that weve had for january and february, i think very broadly that we were right to wait till we were more confident and i think i didnt hear anyone dismissing it as not information that we should look at or anything like that. Generally speaking, it does go in the direction of saying, yes, its appropriate for us to be careful as we approach this question. Reporter thanks, chair powell. Brendan peterson with punch chair news. Central Bank Currency stuff. Weve been hearing a lot from republicans in congress about what the fed is or isnt doing in a digital dollar. Youve said to congress you were going to wait for approval before the fed does anything and launches anything but folks like House Majority whip tom emmer said that the fed is actively researching or hiring personnel for implications of the cdc and sure, ill try harder. We havent proposed or coming to a crossexamination we should propoise or anything like that that Congress Considers legislation to authorize a digital dollar and would take us the ability to do a cbdc or retail cbdc with the public and so were just a long, long way from that. What we are doing and every Major Central Bank is doing is trying to stay in the fran tiers of whats going on in Digital Finance and it has many, many different areas. Theyve become front burner in the last five or six years and we need to be knowledgeable about all that and we have people trying to understand things that are but wrong to say were working on a cbdc and we have a lab and will spring on congress in the right moment. We dont. I havent at all in my own mind made a decision that this is something that the u. S. Should be doing. And something we need to understand and we have people who are keeping up with that as part of the broader payments landscape. Thats how id characterize it. Reporter thank you, mark with bank rate. April 27 is the 13th anniversary since a fed chairman began holding regular news conferences. How important is that higher transparency been in your view both with the proper functioning of the central bank and also an n accomplishing your mission, and is there more that you and your colleagues can do on the transparency front and what might that look like . I generally think this movement started, you know, 30 years ago, 30 years ago when some academics positive that a more transparent central bank and public understands your reaction that the markets do your work and react to the data. So it all happens that way. Theres been a march towards greater and Greater Transparency and that certainly chairman advance that had and chair yet and we went from four press conferences a year to eight so now every meeting really is live now. I think thats a good innovation. I wouldnt want to turn it back. We also have done a bunch of other things and we have a annual supervision report, Financial Stability report. I mean, theres a long list of things weve done. I think you nothing comes to mind as desperately in need of doing it and were very transparent and no shortage of foc participants speaking to the public through the media and that channel is full i would say. So i think its generally broadly helped and made things better. Reporter any day you want to put that genie back in the bottle somewhat . Of course. Not. [ laughter ]. Reporter jennifer with yahoo finance. Not to harp too much more on confidence and inflation but you did say earlier in this press conference that the reason inflation data hasnt raised anyones conference but when you testified before the senate a couple weeks ago you told lawmakers youre not far from receiving the competence needed on inflation to begin cutting rates. Are you still of that belief or not . What are we to take by those words, not far . So let me say my main message at in those two days of hearings was really that the chit tee needs to see more evidence to build our confidence and that inflation is moving down sustain sustain blizzard ws towards the 2 goal and building rates that were more confident and if thats a case, i said that any number of times and part of the main message and repeat that had today in our statement. I to the language you mentioned, i pointed out we made significant progress over the past year and what were looking for now is confirmation that that progress will continue. We had a series of inflation readings over the second half of last year and were really much lower we didnt overreact as i mentioned but thats what i had in mind. Reporter given that you said pce for february 2. 8 the estimate and that we have been seeing pce, core pce coming down by a percent every month, wouldnt you be at about 2. 4 this summer, june july, to a point where you could cut then . Well, you know, well have to see how the data comes in. We would of course love to get great inflation data and got really good inflation data in the second part of next year and didnt overreact and we said we needed to see more, and we said it would be bumpy and now we have january and february, which ive talked about a couple of times. Were looking for more good data and would certainly welcome it. Thank you. Thank you. Liz things that go bump in the night did not spook fed chair Jerome Powell. Rock solid on every attempt to shake him off and push him off, you know, hopefully to push him at least on behalf of some of the questions to alter that 2 inflation target, which for the moment were above. He repeated multiple times the 2 inflation target is where the fed is squarely aiming. Were looking at full blown record highs and the thats partially why the dough jones is jumping 373 points and s p gaining 43 points and nasdaq up 192 and russell is loving this. Up 34 points or 1. 7 and dow jones up 1. 6 or 255 points. All right, so this would bring the fed funds rate to 4. 6 if there are three cuts. The bulls not racing any time and dow at session highs right this minute up 381 points. That is, ill repeat it again, a record. S p topping the 5,200 level for the very first time. Right now were at 5,221. Any gain for the s p is a record. Folks, the number to watch for a record close for the nasdaq is a gain of more than 108 points, were at a gain of 190 points. Theres real action in treasury yields, and the action is south. They are pulling back. Okay, the 10year yield, down 1. 1 basis points for the second day from the highest since november and then the two year yield, which most closely tracks the Federal Reserves policymakers and what they think and what they do, below 4. 7 for the second day. Look at this pullback of 6 basis points at the moment to 4. 628 . Gold jumping and jumped again immediately after the announcement. Earlier the interday around 2,179,000 an ounce and now a gain of 28. Bitcoin is interesting and its higher. When we say higher, it got a lot higher when chair powell just said, this was all happening as we spoke, he was asked about a digital Federal Reserve coin, a central bank coin. He has said thats not in the works. He reiterated that, but said we want to be at the frontier of these kinds of things, and he said its important to move these types of issues to the front burner. There is no secret lab where theyre cooking up a digital currency, but he did say very interested in making sure that they are on this case. Now, i was looking at bitcoin, if you could just keep it up there. Before 2 00 p. M. Eastern when the announcement was made, bitcoin at 64,110. Okay. Now its at 65,292. Take that what you think from it, but i think thats pretty interesting when the Federal Reserve chair says we want to be on the frontier. In the meantime, take a look at oil. Oil is off the 82 a barrel mark and at 81. 34 and this has been slow moved to the downside here. Powell was asked about resent hotter than expected inflation reports weve been seeing. The january report in particular, were talking about cpi and then ppi spooked the markets that day, but powell not spooked. The january number, which was very high, the january cpi and pce numbers were quite high. Theres reason to think that there could be seasonal effects there. But nonetheless we dont want to be completely dismissive of it. The february number was high, higher than expectations, but we have it at currently well below 30basis points and core pce, which is not terribly high. Its not like the january number. I take the two of them together and i think they havent really changed the overall story. Liz joining me now, first on fox business since the Federal Reserve decision, Morton School profession sore emeritus jeremy siegle. Theres confidence inflation is moving back to the 2 target and any of that surprise you and what do you think would move him to start cutting . Well, liz, he was more doveish than even i thought. I thought he was going to be a bit more hawkish, and i think thats why the markets are certainly moving up. That was unexpected weakening of the labor market and when he uttered those words and saw that you had a shy run on that, the dow and the market jumped. If hes going to be responsive to any weakening, thats what the market really wants and so they like that, not overreacting to the fact it is a slow path down to 2 . Yeah, it was a bullish news conference, and certainly a bullish re