Watch Live: Fed Chair Powell On The Future Of Inflation

Fed Chair Jay Powell joins WSJ’s Nick Timiraos (for 35 minutes) to discuss rising interest rates, the Fed’s plan to address high inflation and the outlook for the U.S. economy and labor market, at the WSJ Future of Everything Festival.

The market will be listening for any signs of Powell chickening-out – like he did in late 2018 after the equity market successfully called his bluff on Fed hawkishness – and any indications of a shift back to belief in ‘transitory’ inflation.

Will Powell reiterate his commitment to fighting inflation no matter what…

“…the process of getting inflation down to 2% will also include some pain, but ultimately the most painful thing would be if we were to fail to deal with it and inflation were to get entrenched in the economy at high levels, and we know what that’s like.“

…

“Five words or less. I’m gonna go with what I really am thinking is, ‘get inflation back under control’…”

Will he put 75bps back on the table?

“If things come in better than we expect, then we’re prepared to do less, if they come in worse than when we expect, then we’re prepared to do more.”

Will he admit that a ‘soft landing’ is more luck than skill?

“So the question whether we can execute a soft landing or not, it may actually depend on factors that we don’t control.“

As a reminder, Powell recently noted that he admires Paul Volcker, noting that:

“…[Volcker] did what he thought the right thing was, and he was prepared to be unpopular for that, because he was looking at the medium and longer term, well, for the country. And I don’t have any, you know, I think that’s a good thing to keep in mind as you do public service jobs.”

In recent week since the last FOMC meeting, US Macro data has significantly surprised to the downside…

And financial conditions have already tightened significantly…

Watch Live here (due to start at 1400ET):