a faster payment solution, but rather to offer a range of ideas to move the united states further along the path to a better payment system. we believe that the task force has successfully carried out this role. we are very grateful to the members of the faster payment task force for all of their work and for the collaborative spirit they brought to the job. but there is more to be done to advance our collective vision of a ubiquitous, real - time, secure future payment system. last month, the federal reserve reaffirmed its commitment to that vision in the paper, “ federal reserve next steps in the payments improvement journey, ” which outlines refreshed strategies and tactics that we, in collaboration with the payment industry, will employ to make further progress. 8 i will mention just a few. one of the recommendations from the faster payments task force work was to establish an industry governance framework for collaboration and decision - making on faster payments. to move forward in creating this framework, the task force established the governance framework formation team to develop, publish, and solicit public comment on a proposal for a governance framework. this work group will carry out many of the task force recommendations and the federal reserve, at the request of the task force, is chairing and facilitating this effort. in addition, the federal reserve is considering providing settlement services — a traditional core function of a central bank — to address the future needs of a ubiquitous real - time retail payments environment. we plan to actively engage with the industry and other stakeholders to further understand gaps and requirements for real - time retail payments settlement and assess alternative models that will support needs over the long term. we also plan to explore and assess the need, if any, for other related federal reserve services or capabilities. in carrying out this assessment, we will be guided by current and potential market developments and challenges, as well as our long - established criteria for offering new products and services. these criteria include the need to fully recover costs over the long term ; the expectation that the new service will yield clear public benefit ; and the expectation that other providers alone cannot be expected to provide the service with a reasonable effectiveness, scope, and equity. 9 the federal reserve will also continue to support the ongoing work of the secure payments task force. this task force has been working to educate stakeholders on payment security practices, risks, and actions that could enhance payment security. these are challenging topics, because they require stakeholders to be open and forthcoming about potential vulnerabilities if there is

0. 2 percent and 0. 1 percent over the remaining quarters of the year. core pce inflation jumped to a monthly average of 0. 4 percent in the first quarter of this year but is now estimated to be back to 0. 2 percent last quarter. most importantly, i don't have to look at the second decimal place to see progress! the recent data are making me more confident we will achieve the inflation goal of our dual mandate. monetary policy now let me turn to the implications of this data for monetary policy. as i noted earlier, the changes in the data this year have made it hard to formulate an outlook for policy that would apply to the range of possible paths the economy may take. that range of possibilities must consider two risks. on the one hand, it is essential that monetary policy get inflation down to a sustained level of 2 percent. if we start to loosen policy too soon, and allow inflation to flare up again, we risk losing credibility with the public and allowing expectations of future inflation to become unanchored. that credibility has helped inflation fall as quickly as it has in the past 18 months and squandering it would be a grave mistake. monthly pce inflation has very recently been running near 2 percent at an annual rate, but i need to see a bit more evidence that this will be sustained. the other risk is that we wait too long to ease monetary policy and contribute to a significant economic slowdown or a recession, with unemployment rising notably. 4 / 6 bis - central bankers'speeches with those two risks in mind, let me lay out three scenarios for the economy this year that would result in leading me to different views about appropriate policy. one assumption i make is that there is no significant deterioration in the labor market in the next several months - that we are able to keep the labor market in its current sweet spot. while i believe this is likely, i will be paying close attention to the employment side of our mandate. the first scenario is the optimistic one. here we continue to receive more very favorable cpi inflation reports, with implications for very favorable pce inflation readings as well. this would give us a nice run of inflation data starting in may. i see a significant but not high probability of this scenario occurring. and, in that circumstance, i would have much greater confidence in inflation moving sustainably toward 2 percent. in this scenario, i could envision a rate cut in the not - too - distant future. the second