@mwt

CHAIR POWELL. Well, what’s happened is, time has passed, and we’ve raised interest
rates by 375 basis points. I would not—I would not change a word in that statement, though. I
think until we get inflation down, you’ll be hearing that from me. Again, if we overtighten—and
we don’t want to, we want to get this exactly right—but if we overtighten, then we have the
ability with our tools, which are powerful, to, as we showed at the beginning of the pandemic
episode, we can support economic activity strongly if that happens, if that’s necessary. On the
other hand, if you make the mistake in the other direction and you let this drag on, then it’s a
year or two down the road, and you’re realizing, inflation behaving the way it can, you’re
realizing you didn’t actually get it, you have to go back in. By then, the risk, really, is that it has
become entrenched in people’s thinking. And the record is that the employment costs—the cost
to the people that we don’t want to hurt—they go up with the passage of time. That’s really how
I look at it. So that isn’t going to change. What has changed, though—you’re right—is, we’re
farther along now. And I think as we’re farther along, we’re now focused on that. What’s the
place, what’s the level we need to get to rates? And I don’t know what we’ll do when we get
there, by the way. It doesn’t—we’ll have to see. There’s been no decision or discussion around
exactly what steps we would take at that point. But the first thing is to find your way there.