The Fed Should Give It A Rest

In his previous press conference on February 1, 2023, Fed Chair Jerome Powell mentioned the word “restrictive” 10 times. It was mentioned mostly in the same context as the following: “And we said that we continue to anticipate that ongoing increases in the [federal funds] target range will be appropriate in order to attain that stance of sufficiently restrictive monetary policy that will bring inflation down to 2%.”

More specifically, Powell said, “So we’ve raised rates 4½ percentage points, and we’re talking about a couple of more rate hikes to get to that level we think is appropriately restrictive.”