"Life moves pretty fast" said Ferris Bueller, quoted by Jay Powell

While this could change, Powell in his just released speech is reflecting his bias to protect us first against inflation rather than the labor market being his main focus right now. He believes you need the former in order to help the later. He said, “without price stability, we cannot achieve the long periods of strong labor market conditions that benefit all Americans.”

Basically the Fed is telling us, when we review what Powell just said and what Susan Collins said last week, is that the first help we could get from them would be more liquidity based if markets freeze up rather than rate cuts to help the economy, as of now.

That said, I believe he’s overly optimistic on the state of the US economy currently, referring to it as “still in a solid position” though he does acknowledge the slowing going on, as will be seen for Q1 and the threats from tariffs.