Powell says Fed is 'not confident' it has done enough to bring inflation down

cnbc.com:

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said Thursday that he and his fellow policymakers are encouraged by the slowing pace of inflation but are unsure whether they've done enough to keep the momentum going.

Speaking a little more than a week after the central bank voted to hold benchmark policy rates steady, Powell said in remarks for an International Monetary Fund audience that more work could be ahead in the battle against high prices.

«The Federal Open Market Committee is committed to achieving a stance of monetary policy that is sufficiently restrictive to bring inflation down to 2 percent over time; we are not confident that we have achieved such a stance,» he said in his prepared speech.

For the second time in recent weeks, a public speech from Powell was interrupted by climate protesters. He briefly left the stage before resuming.

The speech comes with inflation still well above the Fed's long-standing goal but also considerably below its peak levels in the first half of 2022. In a series of 11 rate hikes that constituted the most aggressive policy tightening since the early 1980s, the committee took its benchmark rate from near zero to a target range of 5.25%-5.5%.

Those hikes have coincided with the Fed's preferred inflation gauge, the core personal consumption expenditures price index, to fall to an annual rate of 3.7%, from 5.3% in February 2022. The more widely followed consumer price index peaked above 9% in June of last year.

Powell said that inflation is «well above» where the Fed would like to see it.

«My colleagues and I are gratified by this progress but expect that the process of getting inflation sustainably down to 2 percent has a long way to go,» he said.

Stocks headed lower following the speech,