MNI TRANSCRIPT: Powell on Economic Growth Risks

     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: I'm hearing two things from you: You're saying the economy's doing well,

but there's this sense that the economy is actually starting to slow now and

people are, more and more, there's talk about recession.  So... are you -- and

even The Fed thinks the downside risks are arriving.  Do you think GDP growth

will hold study and the unemployment rate?  How do you see the economy evolving

over the next year? 

     A: I think, and my colleagues and I all think that the most-likely case is

for continued moderate growth, continued strong labor market and inflation

moving back up to 2%.  I think that's widely shared among the forecasters. 

   You know... the issue is more in the risks to that.  You have downside risks

here and we talked about them.  It's that global growth will have an effect on

U.S. growth over time.  Less-so than for many other economies.  Still... there's

a sector of our economy that's exposed to that.  Trade policy uncertainty has --

apparently, has an effect.  

   So... and you can see some weakness in the U.S. economy because of all that. 

Nonetheless, the job of monetary policy is to adjust both to insure against

those downside risks, but also to support the economy in light of the existing

weakness that we do see.  

   So... we're not -- as I mentioned, we're not -- we don't see a recession --

we're not forecasting a recession, but... we are adjusting monetary policy in a

more accommodative direction to try to support what is a favorable outlook. 

--MNI Washington Bureau; +1 202 371 2121; email: alexandra.kelley@marketnews.com

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