Powell says one or two rate cuts 'plausible' in 2024

Nick, Nick Tamaros of the Wall Street Journal Chair Powell, if I look at the the rate projections, I see 15 of the 19 that are anticipating either one or two cut this two cuts this year fairly evenly split between the two. And so I wonder if you could explain a little bit more the, the nuances of the differences there. Would two or three more inflation readings like the one that we saw this morning make a September interest rate cut possible? So as far as the Sep part of that is concerned, as you know, I talked to, I talked to all of the other participants on the FOMC every cycle. And we talked about their summer of economic projections and in the dot by their, you know, their dot plot and everything. And what you, what I hear and see is that people are looking at, at, you know, a range of plausible outcomes. And in many cases they're, they're, they're thinking, I don't really, you know, I can't really distinguish between two of these are so close for me. These are very close calls, but we asked them to write down the most likely one. So they do. And as I think you've, you've, as you've said, there's fifteen of the 19 are, are kind of clustered around one or two. So I think I would look at, at, at all. I look at all of them as plausible, but I look at. So I think that does tell you kind of what the committee thinks. But what everyone agrees on is it's going to be data dependent. No one, no one brings to this or takes away from it. That is on the committee a really strong commitment to a particular rate path. It's actually just their forecast and their it's a combination of their forecast and their own reaction function. But again, everyone would say that this is very data dependent and I don't hold it with high confidence. And I think if you're looking for and, and, and don't really think that they're, they're not trying to send a strong signal that this is what I think is the right thing. It's just what they think at a given moment in time subject to data in terms of, you know, future meetings, we haven't, you know, we don't, we don't try to, we don't make decisions about future meetings until we get there. I think in terms of what we need to see, I mentioned it earlier, we, we want to, we want to gain further confidence. Certainly more good inflation readings will help with that. I'm not going to be specific about how many because you know really it's going to be not just the inflation rating readings, it's going to be the totality of the data, what's happening in the labor market, what's happening with the balance of risks, what's happening with the forecast, what's happening with growth. You look at all of that and you ask are we confident? Have we reached an appropriate level of confidence that inflation is moving down sustainably a 2%? Or alternatively, do we see really unexpected signs of weakness in the labor market that would call for a response, which is, which is another thing that could could happen. But again, we don't see that. And I, we do see today's, we see today's report as as progress and as you know, building confidence. But we, we don't see ourselves as having the confidence that would warrant, you know, that would warrant beginning to, to loosen policy at this time.