MNI TRANSCRIPT: Powell on Data Dependence

     WASHINGTON (MNI) - The following is the portion of a transcript from

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell's press conference after the FOMC meeting

Wednesday:

     Q: You say the Fed is data-dependent. Much of the data we've seen since the

June meeting has surprised or been in line with expectations. Can you give us a

sense of how that better than expected data impacted the FOMC's thinking, and if

we keep seeing these upside surprises, does that change or evolve any FOMC

thinking going forward?

     A: Yes. I think we, of course, you know, what we do at every meeting, as I

noted, is we do a deep dive into U.S. economic activity, and global activity,

and certainly carefully went through U.S. economic activity, which there's been

some positive and some negative. Overall the U.S. economy has shown resilience

during the intervening period. But, again, the issue is more the downside risks

and the shortfall in inflation. We're trying to address those. So, in addition,

going forward, I would say, we're going to be monitoring those same things.

We'll be monitoring the evolution of trade uncertainty, of global growth, and of

low inflation. And we'll also be watching the performance of the U.S. economy.

It had shown resilience to those issues. That's how we'll be thinking about

policy going forward. 

--MNI Washington Bureau; tel: +1 202-371-2121; email: kevin.kastner@marketnews.com

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