Federal Reserve press conference, 2021-11-03 — Chair Jerome Powell

Question (Nancy Marshall-Genzer, Marketplace): Hi, Chair Powell. Thanks for taking our questions. So you announced that the Fed is going to taper at a rate of, starting at $15 billion a month, and that’s more than twice the pace of the last taper. So why are you tapering faster this time?
Answer: The economy is in quite a different place than when we tapered back in, I guess it was, 2013. We were much farther away from maximum employment. Inflation was much lower. This is an economy where demand is very, very strong, very strong, and job openings substantially exceed the number of unemployed people. So the need for further stimulus is far less than it was in 2013, where we still had quite a ways to go. I mean, after we began that taper, it was still many years before we reached what I would characterize as conditions consistent with maximum employment, let alone price stability. So this is quite a different situation, and, you know, the Committee unanimously felt today that we had met the test that we’d articulated, and this was appropriate. And this is faster than, you know, than what people had expected six months ago. It’s earlier and faster, and that’s because our, as I mentioned, our policy has been adapting to the situation as it evolves, as it’s clarifying itself, and that’s partly because we see inflation coming in higher—so.