While the 2nd day of the Fed chair’s Humphrey Hawkins testimony – the one before the House Financial Services committee – is traditionally widely ignored as there is nothing new in the prepared remarks, while the House questions are even dumber than those in the Senate (after all Maxine Waters is asking some of them), that was not the case today: the reason – Jerome Powell stressed that policymakers had not yet made up their minds on the size of their interest-rate increase later this month and said it would hinge on incoming data on jobs and inflation.
While the Fed chief repeated his prepared remarks from Tuesday that the US central bank is likely to take rates higher than previously anticipated and that it could move at a faster pace if economic data keeps coming in hot, on Wednesday he diverged slightly from his prepared remarks to qualify the statement by adding that “no decision” had been made.
“If — and I stress that no decision has been made on this — but if the totality of the data were to indicate that faster tightening is warranted, we’d be prepared to increase the pace of rate hikes,” he said.
The bolded text was not present in his original comments.
Powell makes one notable change to his opening statement in his delivery:
“If — *and I stress that no decision has been made on this* — if the totality of the data were to indicate that faster tightening is warranted, we would be prepared to increase the pace of rate hikes.”
— Nick Timiraos (@NickTimiraos) March 8, 2023
The moment Powell’s WSJ mouthpiece Timiraos underscored what the Fed chair said at 10:24am eminis spiked to session highs rising briefly above 4,000, erasing their post-JOLTS drop.
And just to make sure the he was hear loud and clear he told the House Financial Services committee that “we have not made any decision about the March meeting.”
Still, it’s hardly an all clear from Powell, who added that not only would the Fed keep an eye on the JOLTS report – which as noted earlier again came in hotter than expected, for the 27 of the past 29 months, but also said he would be keeping an eye on Friday’s payrolls report and next week’s CPI/PPI: “They’re going to be important in our assessment” the Fed chair said, adding that “we’ll be carefully analyzing them”…
Powell flags the JOLTS survey, the NFP report Friday, and next week’s CPI/PPI:
“They’re going to be important in our assessment.”
“We’ll be carefully analyzing them.”
“We have not made any decision about the March meeting.”
“We’re not on a preset path.”
— Nick Timiraos (@NickTimiraos) March 8, 2023
… clarifying that “we have not made any decision about the March meeting” as the Fed is “not on a preset path.”
Tyler Durden
Wed, 03/08/2023 – 10:54
