Powell: We are not confident that we've achieved sufficiently restrictive policy

<ul><li>If it becomes appropriate to tighten policy further, 'we will not hesitate'</li><li>We will continue to move carefully, decide meeting by meeting</li><li>Attentive to risk that stronger growth could undermine inflation progress, which could warrant a monetary policy response</li><li>We expect GDP growth to moderate in coming quarters, but remains to be see</li><li>Labor market tight, but coming into better balance</li></ul><p>All week, Fed officials have been trying to push back on dovish market pricing and the market ignored it. Now Powell has re-emphasized some of his more-hawkish points from the Fed press conference and the market is listening. The US dollar has jumped on the headlines.</p><p>I <a href="https://www.reuters.com/markets/currencies/forex-euro-finds-footing-hawkish-policy-remarks-lower-energy-prices-2023-11-09/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">spoke with Reuters</a> earlier and said:</p><blockquote data-test>“There
was a pushback from Fed officials to try to reprice something a bit
more hawkish – the Fed doesn’t want to let go of optionality in December
or January for a hike,” said Adam Button, chief currency analyst at
ForexLive in Toronto.</blockquote><blockquote data-test>“I
wonder if Powell doesn’t take another stab at that or lean a bit harder
into the messages that we heard from several of them,” he added.</blockquote>

This article was written by Adam Button at www.forexlive.com.