MNI TRANSCRIPT: Powell on Symmetric Inflation Objective

     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: Please comment on a small change in the statement. It notes that policy

will be appropriate to bring, the committee believes, inflation back to the

committee's 2% symmetric inflation objective. That's a slight change from the

last time when you were expecting it to bring inflation outcomes back near the

objective, and I would put this also in the context of a comment you made at the

last press conference where you drew attention to the fact that a number of

policymakers had projected inflation overshoots two and three years out under

appropriate monetary policy. Should we take all of this together to mean simply

that the Committee is more confident that a 2% outcome for inflation is already

baked in the cake, or that this is a signal that the Committee has a stronger

resolution to bring inflation at least to the 2% objective and bring into play

an informal makeup strategy for inflation? Thank you.

     A: Yeah, so in making that change, our goal was really -- it was changing

near to returning to, was to avoid possible misinterpretation. So you may

remember in the December Minutes, we noted that a few Committee Members stated

the language that supported monetary policy would support inflation near 2%

could be misinterpreted as suggesting that policymakers were comfortable with

inflation running below that level. So, we thought about that in the intervening

period, and concluded that it would be appropriate to adjust that language to

send a clearer signal that we're not comfortable with inflation rising or

running persistently below our 2% symmetric objective, so yes, there is

something in that. It's just that we wanted to underscore our commitment to 2%

not being a ceiling, to inflation running symmetrically around 2% and that we're

not satisfied with inflation running below 2%, particularly at a time such as

now where we're a long way into an expansion and a long way into a period of

very low unemployment when in theory where inflation should be moving up.

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

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