Monetary Policy and Price StabilityRemarks
by Jerome H. Powell Chair
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System at
“Reassessing Constraints on the Economy and Policy,” an economic policy symposium sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City
Jackson Hole, Wyoming
谢谢各位，今天有机会在这里发言。
在过去的杰克逊霍尔会议上，我讨论了一些广泛的话题，如不断变化的经济结构，以及在高度不确定性下执行货币政策的挑战。今天，我的发言将会更短，我的重点将会更窄，我传达的信息将会更直接。
美国联邦公开市场委员会(FOMC)目前的首要任务是将通货膨胀率降至2%的目标。价格稳定是美联储的责任，也是我们经济的基石。如果没有价格稳定，经济就对任何人都不利。特别是，如果价格不稳定，我们将无法实现一个有利于所有人的劳动力市场强劲状况的持续时期。高通胀的负担主要落在那些最无力承受的人身上。
恢复价格稳定需要一段时间，需要大力使用我们的工具来使供需达到更好的平衡。降低通胀率可能需要一段持续的低于趋势的增长时期。此外，劳动力市场的状况很可能会出现一些疲软。虽然利率上升、经济增长放缓和劳动力市场状况疲软将降低通胀，但它们也将给家庭和企业带来一些痛苦。这些都是降低通货膨胀的不幸代价。但如果不能恢复价格稳定，将意味着更大的痛苦。
美国S.经济明显较2021年的历史最高增长率放缓，这反映了大流行衰退后经济重新开放。虽然最新的经济数据好坏参半，但在我看来，我们的经济继续显示出强劲的潜在势头。劳动力市场特别强劲，但它显然是不平衡的，对工人的需求远远超过了供应可用的工人。通货膨胀率远远超过2%，高通货膨胀率继续在整个经济中蔓延。虽然7月份较低的通胀数据受到欢迎，但一个月的改善远低于欧盟委员会在我们相信通胀正在下降之前需要看到的改善。
我们正在有目的地将我们的政策立场转移到一个足够限制的水平，使通货膨胀恢复到2%。在我们7月的最近一次会议上，FOMC将联邦基金利率的目标范围提高到2.25-2.5%，这是经济预测摘要(SEP)对联邦基金利率预计长期结算地点的估计范围。在目前的情况下，由于通胀率远高于2%，而劳动力市场极其紧张，对长期中性的估计不是一个可以停止或暂停的地方。
7月份目标区间的增长是众多会议中第二次增长75个基点，我当时说，在我们下次会议上，再次异常大的增长可能是合适的。我们现在的会议期间已经进行了一半。我们在9月会议上的决定将取决于新公布的总体数据和不断变化的前景。在某种程度上，随着货币政策的立场进一步收紧，放慢加息步伐可能是合适的。恢复价格稳定可能需要在一段时间内保持一个限制性的政策立场。历史记录强烈警告人们不要过早地放松政策。委员会参与者对6月9日进行的最新个人预测显示，到2023年底，联邦基金利率中值略低于4%。与会者将在9月份的会议上更新他们的预测。
我们对货币政策的审议和决定建立在我们从上世纪70年代和80年代的高波动通胀以及过去25年的低稳定通胀中了解到的关于通胀动态的基础上。特别是，我们正在吸取了三个重要的教训。
第一个教训是，央行能够而且应该承担起实现低而稳定的通胀的责任。央行官员和其他人曾经在这两个方面需要被说服，这似乎很奇怪，但正如前主席伯南克所表明的那样，这两种主张在大通胀时期都受到了广泛质疑。1今天，我们认为这些问题已经得到了解决。我们提供价格稳定的责任是无条件的。的确，当前的高通胀是一种全球现象，世界上许多经济体都面临着比美国一样高或更高的通胀。在我看来，美国目前的高通货膨胀率也确实是强劲需求和供应受限的产物，而美联储的工具主要作用于总需求。所有这些都不会削弱美联储履行我们指定的实现价格稳定任务的责任。显然，在缓和需求以更好地适应供应方面有一件工作要做。我们致力于做这项工作。
第二个教训是，公众对未来通胀的预期可以在设定通胀道路方面发挥重要作用。如今，从许多指标来看，长期通胀预期似乎保持良好。对家庭、企业和预测者的调查以及基于市场的措施都是如此好但这不是自满的理由，通胀在一段时间内远远高于我们的目标。如果公众预计通胀将在一段时间内保持低且稳定，那么，如果没有重大冲击，很可能会如此。不幸的是，对高而波动的通胀的预期也是如此。在20世纪70年代，随着通货膨胀率的攀升，对高通胀的预期在家庭和企业的经济决策中开始根深蒂固。通货膨胀上升得越多，就有越多的人期望它保持在高水平，他们在工资和定价决策中建立了这种信念。正如前主席保罗·沃尔克在1979年大通胀的高峰期所说，“通胀在一定程度上助长了通胀本身，所以恢复一个更稳定、更有生产力的经济的部分工作必须是打破通胀预期的控制。”关于实际通货膨胀如何影响对其未来道路的预期的一个有用的见解是基于“理性忽视”的概念。3当通胀持续高企时，家庭和企业必须密切关注通胀，并将通胀纳入其经济决策。当通胀率较低且稳定时，他们可以更自由地将注意力集中在其他地方。前主席格林斯潘是这样说的：“实际上，价格稳定意味着平均价格水平的预期变化足够小、足够渐进，不会实质性地进入商业和家庭财务决策。”
当然，通胀现在几乎引起了所有人的关注，这突出了今天一个特殊的风险：当前一轮高通胀持续的时间越长，高通胀预期根深蒂固的可能性就越大。这就给我想到了第三节课，那就是我们必须坚持下去，直到工作完成。历史表明，随着高通胀在工资和价格设定中变得更加根深蒂固，降低通胀的就业成本很可能会随着延迟而增加。上世纪80年代初，沃尔克成功解除通胀，在过去15年里多次试图降低通胀失败。最终需要一段漫长的非常严格的货币政策来遏制高通胀，并开始将通胀降至低至去年春季之前的稳定水平的过程。我们的目标是通过立即采取果断行动来避免这种结果。这些教训正在指导我们使用我们的工具来降低通货膨胀。我们正在采取有力而迅速的措施来缓和需求，使其更好地与供应保持一致，并保持通胀预期。我们将继续坚持下去，直到我们确信工作已经完成为止。
英文演讲原文如下：
Thank you for the opportunity to speak here today.
At past Jackson Hole conferences, I have discussed broad topics such as the ever- changing structure of the economy and the challenges of conducting monetary policy under high uncertainty. Today, my remarks will be shorter, my focus narrower, and my message more direct.
The Federal Open Market Committee’s (FOMC) overarching focus right now is to bring inflation back down to our 2 percent goal. Price stability is the responsibility of the Federal Reserve and serves as the bedrock of our economy. Without price stability, the economy does not work for anyone. In particular, without price stability, we will not achieve a sustained period of strong labor market conditions that benefit all. The burdens of high inflation fall heaviest on those who are least able to bear them.
Restoring price stability will take some time and requires using our tools forcefully to bring demand and supply into better balance. Reducing inflation is likely to require a sustained period of below-trend growth. Moreover, there will very likely be some softening of labor market conditions. While higher interest rates, slower growth, and softer labor market conditions will bring down inflation, they will also bring some pain to households and businesses. These are the unfortunate costs of reducing inflation. But a failure to restore price stability would mean far greater pain.
The U.S. economy is clearly slowing from the historically high growth rates of 2021, which reflected the reopening of the economy following the pandemic recession. While the latest economic data have been mixed, in my view our economy continues to show strong underlying momentum. The labor market is particularly strong, but it is clearly out of balance, with demand for workers substantially exceeding the supply of available workers. Inflation is running well above 2 percent, and high inflation has continued to spread through the economy. While the lower inflation readings for July are welcome, a single month’s improvement falls far short of what the Committee will need to see before we are confident that inflation is moving down.
We are moving our policy stance purposefully to a level that will be sufficiently restrictive to return inflation to 2 percent. At our most recent meeting in July, the FOMC raised the target range for the federal funds rate to 2.25 to 2.5 percent, which is in the Summary of Economic Projection’s (SEP) range of estimates of where the federal funds rate is projected to settle in the longer run. In current circumstances, with inflation running far above 2 percent and the labor market extremely tight, estimates of longer-run neutral are not a place to stop or pause.
July’s increase in the target range was the second 75 basis point increase in as many meetings, and I said then that another unusually large increase could be appropriate at our next meeting. We are now about halfway through the intermeeting period. Our decision at the September meeting will depend on the totality of the incoming data and the evolving outlook. At some point, as the stance of monetary policy tightens further, it likely will become appropriate to slow the pace of increases.
Restoring price stability will likely require maintaining a restrictive policy stance for some time. The historical record cautions strongly against prematurely loosening policy. Committee participants’ most recent individual projections from the June SEP showed the median federal funds rate running slightly below 4 percent through the end of 2023. Participants will update their projections at the September meeting.
Our monetary policy deliberations and decisions build on what we have learned about inflation dynamics both from the high and volatile inflation of the 1970s and 1980s, and from the low and stable inflation of the past quarter-century. In particular, we are drawing on three important lessons.
The first lesson is that central banks can and should take responsibility for delivering low and stable inflation. It may seem strange now that central bankers and others once needed convincing on these two fronts, but as former Chairman Ben Bernanke has shown, both propositions were widely questioned during the Great Inflation period. Today, we regard these questions as settled. Our responsibility to deliver price stability is unconditional. It is true that the current high inflation is a global phenomenon, and that many economies around the world face inflation as high or higher than seen here in the United States. It is also true, in my view, that the current high inflation in the United States is the product of strong demand and constrained supply, and that the Fed’s tools work principally on aggregate demand. None of this diminishes the Federal Reserve’s responsibility to carry out our assigned task of achieving price stability. There is clearly a job to do in moderating demand to better align with supply. We are committed to doing that job.
The second lesson is that the public’s expectations about future inflation can play an important role in setting the path of inflation over time. Today, by many measures, longer-term inflation expectations appear to remain well anchored. That is broadly true of surveys of households, businesses, and forecasters, and of market-based measures as well. But that is not grounds for complacency, with inflation having run well above our goal for some time.
If the public expects that inflation will remain low and stable over time, then, absent major shocks, it likely will. Unfortunately, the same is true of expectations of high and volatile inflation. During the 1970s, as inflation climbed, the anticipation of high inflation became entrenched in the economic decisionmaking of households and businesses. The more inflation rose, the more people came to expect it to remain high, and they built that belief into wage and pricing decisions. As former Chairman Paul Volcker put it at the height of the Great Inflation in 1979, “Inflation feeds in part on itself, so part of the job of returning to a more stable and more productive economy must be to break the grip of inflationary expectations.”
One useful insight into how actual inflation may affect expectations about its future path is based in the concept of “rational inattention.” When inflation is persistently high, households and businesses must pay close attention and incorporate inflation into their economic decisions. When inflation is low and stable, they are freer to focus their attention elsewhere. Former Chairman Alan Greenspan put it this way: “For all practical purposes, price stability means that expected changes in the average price level are small enough and gradual enough that they do not materially enter business and household financial decisions.”
Of course, inflation has just about everyone’s attention right now, which highlights a particular risk today: The longer the current bout of high inflation continues, the greater the chance that expectations of higher inflation will become entrenched.
That brings me to the third lesson, which is that we must keep at it until the job is done. History shows that the employment costs of bringing down inflation are likely to increase with delay, as high inflation becomes more entrenched in wage and price setting. The successful Volcker disinflation in the early 1980s followed multiple failed attempts to lower inflation over the previous 15 years. A lengthy period of very restrictive monetary policy was ultimately needed to stem the high inflation and start the process of getting inflation down to the low and stable levels that were the norm until the spring of last year. Our aim is to avoid that outcome by acting with resolve now.
These lessons are guiding us as we use our tools to bring inflation down. We are taking forceful and rapid steps to moderate demand so that it comes into better alignment with supply, and to keep inflation expectations anchored. We will keep at it until we are confident the job is done.
