Press conference exchange between STEVE LIESMAN and Fed Chair Jerome Powell:

user: Mr. Chairman, thank you. You have, I think a couple of times in your opening remarks, talked about this language “in determining the extent of additional policy firming that may be appropriate.” Should we take that to mean that additional hikes are likely on the way? And should we also believe that all future meetings—say, September and November— are live, or are you in an every-other-meeting mode? Thank you.

assistant: So we haven’t made a decision to go to every other meeting. It’s not something we’ve looked at. We’re going to be going meeting by meeting, and as we go into each meeting, we’re going to be asking ourselves the same questions. So we haven’t made any decisions about, about any future meetings, including the pace at which we’d consider hiking. But we’re going to be assessing the need for further tightening that may be appropriate—you read the language—“to return inflation to 2 percent over time.” I would say that the intermeeting data came in broadly in line with expectations: Economic activity remained resilient, job creation remains strong while cooling a bit, and the June CPI report actually came in a bit better than expectations for a change. And the June CPI report, of course, was welcomed, but it’s only one report, one month’s data. We hope that inflation will follow a lower path, as was—that will be consistent with the CPI reading, but we don’t know that, and we’re just going to need to see more data. So, what are we going to be looking at? Really, it will be the broader, the whole broader picture, and starting with—we’re looking for moderate growth, right? We’re looking for supply and demand through the economy coming into better balance, including, in particular, in the labor market. We’ll be looking at inflation. We’ll be asking ourselves, does this whole collection of data, do we assess it as suggesting that we need to raise rates further? And if we make that conclusion, then we will go ahead and raise rates. So that’s how we’re thinking about the next meeting and, you know, how we’re thinking about meetings going forward potentially, but, you know, we’re now mainly thinking about the next meeting. I will also say, since we’re talking about it, between now and the September meeting, we get two more job reports, two more CPI reports. I think we have an ECI report coming later this week—which is an employment compensation index—and lots of data on economic activity. All of that information is going to inform our decision as we go into that meeting. I would say it is certainly possible that we would raise funds again at the September meeting if the data warrant it, and I would also say it’s possible that we would choose to hold steady at that meeting. We’re going to be making careful assessments, as I said, meeting by meeting, and I’ll close by saying we’ve raised the federal funds rate now by 525 basis points since March 2022. Monetary policy, we believe, is restrictive and is putting downward pressure on economic activity and inflation.

user: If I could just briefly follow up on something you said there: You said the data in the intermeeting period, it probably came line with expectations. Does that mean there’s unlikely to have been a change in the overwhelming outlook of the Committee that two more hikes are necessary?

assistant: I’m just going to go back to what I said. We, we—you know, that’s the question. We have eight weeks now until the September meeting, and all that data that I recited, we’re going to be looking at all that and making that assessment then. And it really—we did have the one good reading, and, of course, we welcome that. But it’s just one reading, as everybody knows. And, and, you know, we’ve seen—we’ve seen this before in the data. Many forecasts call for, for rates—for, for inflation to remain low, but we just don’t know that until we see the data. So we’ll be focusing on that.