Federal Reserve press conference, 2022-09-21 — Chair Jerome Powell

Question (Steve Liesman, CNBC): Well, there you go. Is it linear? Do you keep raising rates, or is there a pause that you could envision where you kind of figure out what has happened to the economy and give time to catch up in the real economy—the rate increase time to catch up in the real economy? Thank you.
Answer: So I think it’s very hard to say with precise certainty the way this is going to unfold. As I mentioned, what we think we need to do and should do is to move our policy rate to a restrictive level that’s restrictive enough to bring inflation down to 2 percent, where we have confidence of that. And what you see in the SEP numbers is people’s views as of today, as of this meeting, as to the kind of levels that will be appropriate. Now, those will evolve over time, and I think we’ll just have to see how that goes. There is a possibility, certainly, that we would go to a certain level that we’re confident in and stay there for a time. But we’re not at that level. Clearly, today we’re, we’ve just moved, I think, probably, into the very lowest level of what might be restrictive, and, certainly, in my view and the view of the Committee, there’s a ways to go.