Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell on Wednesday said that interest rates are “just below” neutral. “Interest rates are still low by historical standards, and they remain just below the broad range of estimates of the level that would be neutral for the economy–that is, neither speeding up nor slowing down growth,” Powell told the Economic Club of New York. In early October, Powell had said that Fed policy was “a long way from neutral at this point, probably.” In the speech in New York, Powell characterized the overall risks to financial stability as “moderate” as he described the inaugural publication of the central bank’s report on the topic.
