Jerome Powell, Interview: Wall Street Journal Interview Livestreamed

“So as a policy maker, the way I’m thinking about it is that right now, we’re raising rates expeditiously to what we’ve been saying to a more normal level, which is something that we’ll reach maybe in the fourth quarter, but it’s not a stopping point. It’s not a looking around point. We don’t know with any confidence where neutral is. We don’t know where tight is. We just don’t. And particularly in this environment of higher inflation and very strong growth in a really tight labor market. So what we’re going to be looking at meeting by meeting, data reading by data reading is what’s happening with financial conditions and what’s happening with the economy, really with what effects are changes in policy having on the economy, are we starting to see what we need to see?”

“Which is a really clear and convincing evidence that inflation is coming down. That’s what we really need to see. So be watching for that. If that involves moving past broadly understood levels of neutral, we won’t hesitate at all to do that. We won’t. And honestly, we will go until we feel like we are at a place where we can say yes, financial conditions are in an inappropriate place. We see inflation coming down. We’ll go to that point, and there won’t be any hesitation about that.”