Federal Reserve press conference, 2025-10-29 — Chair Jerome Powell

Question (Colby Smith, New York Times): But if this shutdown lasts a while longer and you don’t have that data in hand, I’m just wondering how that hinders the Committee’s ability to assess the state of the labor market and make the right policy decisions. And, also, how much is that factoring into the debate about December?
Answer: Yeah. So we’ll—we get—I mentioned what we get in the labor area. We get some data in inflation, some data in economic activity. And we’ll get—we’ll have a picture of what’s going on. We also will have the Beige Book again. I would say we’re not going to be able to have the detailed feel of things, but I think if there were significant or material change in the economy one way or another, I think we’d pick that up through this. So in terms of how it might affect December, it’s really hard to say. December is a—the meeting’s, like, six weeks away. We just don’t know what we’re going to get. If there is a very high level of uncertainty, then that could be an argument in favor of caution about moving. But we’ll have to see how it unfolds.

Question (Andrew Ackerman, Washington Post): Okay. I also just wanted to ask a FinReg question. I think several years ago, you said the overall amount of capital in the system was about right. As the Fed moves forward with a revised Basel proposal, potentially changes to the G-SIB surcharge, has that changed at all? Or are you planning to significantly reduce the amount of capital in the system? Thanks.
Answer: So there’s discussions going on, I think, among the agencies, and I don’t want to get ahead of those discussions. I continue to think that the level of capital, when I said that in 2020, was about right. And, of course, there’s been much capital added since then, through various mechanisms, but I look forward to—I know these discussions are really just getting going, they haven’t come to the point where they’re—where they’ve got a whole plan and that kind of thing. So I really don’t have much to say on that.

Question (Courtenay Brown, Axios): Hi, Chair Powell. Courtenay Brown from Axios. As you know, the 12 Reserve Bank presidents’ terms are up for renewal at the end of February. I’m wondering if you can give us a timeline for when the Board will consider those reappointments and whether we can expect everyone to be re-upped or if we can expect some changes.
Answer: So it’s a process that we go through, under the law. The way the law works is, we have a reappointment process every five years for all of the—all of the Reserve— each of them and all of them. We’re in the middle of that process, and we’re going to complete it in a timely way. And I really—that’s really all I can say.