moreover, inflation expectations, those measured by both surveys and market prices, have moved lower and reside at the low end of a range i consider consistent with our price - stability mandate. the shift in the stance of monetary policy that we undertook in 2019 was, i believe, well timed and has been providing support to the economy and helping to keep the u. s. outlook on track. i believe that monetary policy is in a good place and should continue to support sustained growth, a strong labor market, and inflation running close to our symmetric 2 percent objective. as long as incoming information about the economy remains broadly consistent with this outlook, the current stance of monetary policy likely will remain appropriate. looking ahead, monetary policy is not on a preset course. the committee will proceed on a meeting - by - meeting basis and will be monitoring the effects of our recent policy actions along with other information bearing on the outlook as we assess the appropriate path of the target range for the federal funds rate. of course, if developments emerge that, in the future, trigger a material reassessment of our outlook, we will respond accordingly. in january 2019, my fomc colleagues and i affirmed that we aim to operate with an ample level of bank reserves in the u. s. financial system. 3 and in october, we announced and began to 1 / 2 bis central bankers'speeches implement a program to address pressures in repurchase agreement ( repo ) markets that became evident in september. 4 to that end, we have been purchasing treasury bills and conducting both overnight and term repurchase operations, and these efforts were successful in relieving pressures in the repo markets over the year - end. as we enter 2020, let me emphasize that we stand ready to adjust the details of this program as appropriate and in line with our goal, which is to keep the federal funds rate in the target range desired by the fomc. as the minutes of the december fomc meeting suggest, it may be appropriate to gradually transition away from active repo operations this year as treasury bill purchases supply a larger base of reserves, though some repo might be needed at least through april, when tax payments will sharply reduce reserve levels. finally, allow me to offer a few words about the fomc review of the strategy, tools, and communication practices that we commenced in february 2019. this review — with public engagement unprecedented in scope for us — is the first of its kind for the federal reserve

how many banks failed, then greater transparency would indeed be a mistake. but that is not the purpose of stress testing, and it never has been. the vitally important goal is to improve and sustain good risk management and capital planning at the individual institutions we supervise and to promote the stability of the financial system. like a teacher, we don ’ t want banks to fail, we want them to learn. in this case, we want them to learn good risk management in the context of forward - looking capital planning. this will provide the public with more information about the capital planning of major banks, and about how the federal reserve views good capital planning and risk management, bolstering our credibility. the second principle reflected in recent changes to stress testing is simplicity. one important 4 / 6 bis central bankers'speeches proposal — what we are calling the stress capital buffer — would simplify the fed ’ s large bank capital rule by integrating the stress testing process with our traditional regulatory capital rules. our regulatory capital rule includes both minimum capital requirements and a buffer that sits on top of those minimum requirements. the buffer serves as an early warning to a firm and to supervisors, and it requires the firm to reduce its capital distributions as the firm approaches the minimum requirements. integrating these two standards is a natural evolution of ccar away from its origins during the crisis, when such tailoring was impractical and policy makers had not yet considered the approach of a regulatory capital buffer on top of a regulatory capital minimum. the stress capital buffer would result in a more transparent and simplified system of regulatory capital requirements because a firm will be held to a single, integrated capital regime. the stress capital buffer would not reduce the stringency of the regulatory capital framework for large banks, but it would effect a substantial simplification of that framework. by my math, the number of different capital requirements applicable to large banks would fall from 18 to eight and the number of different total loss absorbing capacity requirements for large banks would fall from 24 to 14. i expect that we will move forward with a revised stress capital buffer proposal in the near future, reflecting many of the comments received on our original proposal. the third principle addressed by the recent changes is volatility. when i think about volatility in stress testing, i want to distinguish what i consider to be useful variation in the tests, in the form of exploration of salient risks, from what i consider to be less useful variation, in the form of unexpected swings in capital requirements