Powell speech: Will not pull back support until very confident it is not necessary

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell is responding to questions before the House Financial Services Committee in the second day of his testimony on Capitol Hill.

Key quotes

“In medium-term, sometime in the middle of next year, people will regain the confidence they can gather, will have a positive effect on the economy.”

“The path is uncertain because we are still learning about vaccine efficacy, speed of rollout.”

“Overall, we see a very positive set of developments coming.”

“The economic crisis caused by the pandemic is not over.”

“Our priority is supporting the economy until we are really well through this.”

“We will keep rates low, tools working until clearly past danger from the pandemic.

“We are not going to pull back support until very confident it is not necessary.”

“The time will come to pull back, slowly and carefully, but that’s well into the future.”

“We don’t want balance sheet in long run to be bigger than it needs to be.

Market reaction

The US Dollar Index showed no immediate reaction to these comments and was last seen losing 0.12% on the day at 91.20.