Federal Reserve press conference, 2019-09-18 — Chair Jerome Powell

Question (Steve Liesman, CNBC): Could I just follow up here quickly? Do you think you’ve underestimated the amount of reserves necessary for the banking system?
Answer: So we’ve always said that it’s—that the level is uncertain, right? And that’s something we’ve tried to be very clear about. And as you know, we’ve invested lots of time talking to many of the large holders of reserves to assess their—what they say is their demand for reserves. We try to assess what that is. We’ve tried to combine all of that together. We put it out so the public can react to it. But, yes, there’s real uncertainty, and it is certainly possible that we will need to resume the organic growth of the balance sheet earlier than we thought. That’s always been a possibility, and it certainly is now. Again, we’ll be looking at this carefully in coming days and taking it up at the next meeting.