Powell Concedes It Would Have Been Appropriate to Move Earlier in Hindsight

- Last Q: You said in Congress that in hindsight the Fed should have moved earlier, and it sounds today you don't think the Fed is late. If the Fed is behind the curve, how far is it behind?

• A: We don't have the luxury of 20/20 hindsight in implementing decisions. The right question is, did you make the right decisions based on what you knew at the time. I think if we knew now that these supply chain problems and inflation from then were going to happen, yes it would have been appropriate to move earlier.
• That's a separate question from your question about being behind the curve.
• We're not going to let high inflation become entrenched. The costs of that would be too high. And we're not going to wait so long that wen have to do that. No-one wants to have to put restrictive monetary policy in order to get inflation back down. The need is one of getting rates back to neutral levels as quickly as we practicably can, and moving beyond that if appropriate.