Federal Reserve press conference, 2019-01-30 — Chair Jerome Powell

Question (Sam Fleming, Financial Times): Thanks. Sam Fleming from the Financial Times. The Fed has linked its commitment to patience in part to subdued inflation outcomes. Would you be comfortable with continuing patience even if there are modest, if transient, overshoots to the inflation target by core inflation? How sensitive are you right now to developments in core inflation when determining the next move? Thanks.
Answer: You know, generally speaking, we think the outlook is favorable, and we think that these crosscurrents that I referred to—these risks—are going to be with us for a while. We think our stance is appropriate. We think there’s no pressing need to change our policy stance and no need to rush to judgment there. I would say that we’ll be looking at a full range of data, and that will include inflation data. It will include all data relevant to our dual mandate of stable prices and maximum employment. Remember that our inflation objective is a symmetric one, meaning that we are— we’re always trying to get to 2 percent, and we don’t look at—we look at inflation equally on both sides. So I can’t get into specific hypotheticals, but I do believe that we have a symmetric objective, and I believe we’ll act that way.