Jerome Powell

And... After my term as chair ends on May 15, I will continue to serve as a governor for a period of time to be determined.

I worry that these attacks are battering the institution and putting at risk the thing that really matters to the public,

which is the ability to conduct monetary policy without taking into consideration political factors.

I had long planned to be retiring.

And, you know, the things that have happened really in the last three months have, I think, left me no choice but to stay until I see them through at least that long.

For a long time, we've been

working on the hypothesis really that tariffs would lead to a one-time price increase and that that would go away over time.

In other words, that there would be no further change.

So measured inflation wouldn't reflect that higher level going up more and more.

And it's time for that to happen.

We really do expect that to be happening in the next two quarters.

So we'll be watching very carefully to see that what we've thought all along would happen.

That's kind of critical part of the forecast.

We need to really see that.

With energy, it's so hard to say.

I mentioned in sort of the textbook, you would look through an oil shock because they tend to be short-lived and they tend to revert.

And monetary policy works with long and variable lags.

you wouldn't necessarily react right away.

I think that is all the more true given that we're several years above 2% inflation and that we're already looking through the tariff shock.

So I think we're going to be very cautious about that.