WASHINGTON – Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Wednesday underscored the Fed's commitment to reducing unemployment to multi-decade lows, where it stood before the pandemic, while signaling little concern about the risk of potentially high inflation or financial market instability.
Powell stressed in prepared remarks for a webcast to the Economic Club of New York that the job market was far from fully recovered and that the Fed isn't considering any increase in its benchmark short-term interest rate from its current level near zero.
He did not refer to the surging stock market or to recent signs of market froth, like the explosive volatility in the prices of GameStop and other stocks targeted by ordinary day traders. “Despite the