Testimony from chair Powell and Treasury Secretary Yellen.
Powell Highlights:
- Monetary policy highly accommodative
- inflation may rise this year on base effects/demand
- impact on inflation won't be very large or persistent
- strongly committed to price expectations anchored at 2%
- We have tools to deal with inflation if it's a concern
- Our best expectations is modest upward pressure on prices this year
- Hard to say what effect SLR exemption's had on treasury market functioning
- That danger has now long passed
- At very early stage of understanding risk to financial institutions of climate change
- some asset prices a bit high but funding risk modest, banks are well capitalized
Yellen:
- Tax changes will help to pay for economic programs
- Corporate tax impact on prices, consumers is unclear
- Administration won't propose policies including revenue raisers
- We expect to examine changes to tax policies.
- No current plans to lengthen maturity of government debt
