Accordingly, Powell confirmed a positive signal about US inflation, just like last week, when he announced an adjustment of the standard interest rate by 0.25%. The Fed expects 2023 to be a year of significantly lower inflation. However, this commission will likely take not only this year but also next year to hit its 2% inflation target. Jerome Powell said:
“The disinflationary process, the process of getting inflation down, has begun,”
“Our message was, ‘This process is likely to take quite a bit of time, it’s not going to be smooth, it’s probably going to be bumpy,” Powell added, referring to getting inflation back to the Fed’s 2% target. “So we think that we’re going to need to do further rate increases, as we said, and we think that we’ll need to hold policy at a restrictive level for a period of time.”
However, at the end of the discussion, the Fed Chairman continued to emphasize that, despite being positive in the process of reducing inflation, the Fed is still forced to raise interest rates more aggressively if the labor market does not weaken.
“The reality is that we are going to react to the data. If we continue to get higher jobs reports or higher inflation reports, it may be the case that we have to raise rates more.”
Mr. Powell said inflation is unlikely to go away quickly. “The base case for me is that it will take some time. We will have to do more rate increases and then look around to see if we have done enough,” he said.
Fed Chairman chairman helped crypto to dye green. Bitcoin (BTC) surged to $23,320 before falling back to $23,070 just 15 minutes later. The biggest crypto is currently bouncing back and keeping the price at $23,452.
Ethereum (ETH) also surged, hitting the $1,675 mark before shaking off its bullish momentum and turning red. But eventually recovered and is following Bitcoin trading around the $1,697 mark.
The major altcoins are also flourishing in the 2-5% range.
