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started uh can you please silence your cell phones so that they don't go off I'm I'm Anil cashup I'm one of the directors of the CL Center that hosts this conference and uh we're we're delighted to be able to host uh chair pal um The Run of show is going to be that he'll make some opening remarks then we'll have a moderated conversation and uh I think uh he needs no introduction so please join me in weling uh chair pal back to the US monetary [Applause] par thanks very much Anil it's great uh to be here and see a lot of familiar faces I'm I'm glad that it turns out we don't actually have a majority of the fomc here so uh we can we can speak to each other without violating the government of Sunshine Law um so I have some brief remarks uh about the economy and the path of policy and and then I look forward to our discussion despite elevated levels of uncertainty the US economy continues to be in a good place the labor market is solid and inflation has moved closer to our 2% longer run goal at the FED we are intently focused on our dual mandate goals given to us by Congress maximum employment and stable prices turning to the recent data the economy has been growing at a solid Pace GDP expanded at a 2. 3% annual rate in the fourth quarter of last year extending a period period of consistent growth that has been supported by resilient consumer spending recent indicators point to a possible moderation in consumer spending relative to the rapid growth over the second half of 2024 further recent surveys of households and businesses point to heightened uncertainty about the economic Outlook it remains to be seen how these developments might affect future spending and investment sentiment readings have not been a good predictor of consumption growth in recent years we contines to carefully monitor a variety of indic variety of indicators of household and business spending turning to the labor market many indicators show that the labor market is solid and broadly inbalance the jobs report released this morning showed employers added 151,000 jobs to payrolls in February and the unemployment rate ticked up 1110th to 4. 1% last month smoothing over the month-to-month volatility since September employers have added a solid 200,000 jobs a month on average the unemployment rate remains low and is held in a narrow range between 3.

9% and 4. 2% over the past year the jobs to workers Gap has narrowed and the quits rate has moved below pre-pandemic levels wages are growing faster than inflation and at a more sustainable Pace than earlier in the pandemic recovery with wage growth moderating and labor supply and demand having moved into better balance the labor market is not a significant source of inflationary pressure for inflation inflation has come down a long way from its mid 2022 Peak above 7% without a sharp increase in unemployment a historically unusual and most welcome outcome while progress in reducing inflation has been broad-based recent readings remain somewhat above our 2% objective the path to sustainably returning inflation to our target has been bumpy and we expect that to continue we see ongoing progress in categories that remain elevated such as Housing Services and the market-based components of non-housing services inflation can be volatile month-to month and we do not overreact to one or two readings that are higher or lower than anticipated data re released last week showed that total pce Prices rose 2. 5% over the 12 months ending in January and that core pce Rose 2.

6% we pay close attention to a broad range of measures of inflation expectations and some near-term measures have recently moved up we see this in both mark market and Survey based measures and Survey respondents both consumers and businesses are mentioning tariffs as a driving Factor beyond the next year or so however most measures of longer term expectations remain stable and consistent with our 2% inflation goal looking ahead the new Administration is in the process of implementing significant policy changes in four distinct areas trade immigration fiscal policy and regulation it is the net effect of of these policy changes that will matter for the economy and for the path of monetary policy while there have been recent developments in some of these areas especially trade policy uncertainty around the changes and their likely effects remains high as we parse the incoming information we are focused on separating the signal from the noise as the Outlook evolves we do not need to be in a hurry and we are well positioned to wait for greater Clarity policy not on a preset course if the economy remains strong but inflation does not continue to move sustainably toward 2% we can maintain policy restraint for longer if the labor market were to weaken unexpectedly or inflation were to fall more quickly than anticipated we can ease policy accordingly our current policy stance is well position to deal with the risks and uncertainties that we face in pursuing both sides of our mandate before I conclude I'll note that at our last fomc meeting we began our second 5-year review of our monetary policy framework we will consider changes to our consensus statement and to our Communications as part of this review the consensus statement articulates our framework for the conduct of monetary policy in P pursuit of our statutory goals we will consider the lessons of the past five years and adapt our approach where appropriate to best serve the American people to whom we are accountable the 2% longer run inflation goal will be retained and is not a focus of the review this public review will be familiar to those who followed our process 5 years ago we will hold out Outreach events around the country involving a range of parties including fed listens events we're open to new ideas and critical feedback we will host a research conference in Washington in May our intent is to wrap up the review by late summer thank you very much I look forward to your questions an all right thanks for that uh before we get into the current conjuncture uh is there anything more you can share about where you think the framework is going to land it was nice to hear the parameters that you uh laid out but is there there anything more that you can say beyond what you just sure so um so I said there are two things really there's there's changes to the consensus statement and then they they looking at really our post meeting uh Communications we're going to look at those two things a lot and as it relates to the consensus statement which is also known as the statement on longer run goals and monetary policy therefore it needed a shorter name uh we are going to be looking a lot at the changes that we made in 2020 so if you go back to 2020 what we had was uh we'd been at the effective lower Bound for seven years we never got rates above 2% uh we we were uh we were at 1.