Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell set a reporter from Fox Business straight on the basics of the U.S. economy and inflation Wednesday during a press conference.
During the press conference, reporter Edward Lawrence suggested that government spending was partially responsible for inflation, remarking:
“Inflation has been rather sticky, so do you need help from the fiscal side to get inflation down faster?”
Powell replied:
“We don’t give advice to the fiscal authorities, and we assume that we take fiscal policy as it comes to our front door, stick it in our model along with a million other things, and we have responsibility for price stability. And we will get inflation down to 2% in time.”
Lawrence tried again to link spending to inflation:
“But the spending that’s happened is working against what you are doing, right? So it’s prolonging inflation?”
That led Powell to dress down Edwards:
