Federal Reserve press conference, 2024-03-20 — Chair Jerome Powell

Question (Rachel Siegel, Washington Post): Hi, Chair Powell. Rachel Siegel from the Washington Post. Thanks for taking our questions. You and others have been saying that relief on housing inflation is coming, but it still hasn’t shown up meaningfully in the CPI or the PCE. Does that challenge your assumption about when the shift will finally break through, since it hasn’t at that point?
Answer: So I think there’s some confidence that the market rents—lower market rent increases that we’re seeing will show up in measures of housing services inflation over time. There’s a little bit of uncertainty about when that will happen, but there’s real confidence that they will show up eventually over time. But, again, uncertainty about the exact timing of that.

Question (Christopher Rugaber, Associated Press): Great, and just a quick follow[-up]. On the projections, you also have 2.6 percent core inflation for the end of this year. It’s already at—or you mentioned it being 2.8 in February. I mean, that doesn’t sound like much disinflation at all. So are you really, are you still confident or—at the last press conference, you sounded pretty optimistic [that] you would get more confidence at the end of this year. Is it right to say that this suggests you’re not seeing a lot of disinflation this year compared to what we’ve seen 2023 and so forth?
Answer: I think that that higher year-end number reflects the data we’ve seen so far this year because you’re now—you’re now in this year. So I think that—sorry, say your last part of your question again.

Question (Christopher Rugaber, Associated Press): Are you still optimistic that you’ll get the confidence you need this year?
Answer: I, you know, I think, if you look at the SEP, what it says is that it is still likely in most people’s view that we will achieve that confidence and that there will be rate cuts. But that’s really going to depend on the incoming data. It is. The other thing is, in the second half of the year, you have some pretty low readings, so it might be harder to make progress as you move that 12-month window forward. Nonetheless, we’re looking for data that confirm the kind of low readings that we had last year and give us a higher degree of confidence that what we saw was really inflation moving sustainably down to 2 percent—toward 2 percent.