<span>STORY: Fed Chair Jerome Powell says rate hikes are not impossible, but unlikely at this time</span><span>:: March 18, 2026</span><span>“Like the last meeting, this meeting did raise the possibility that our next move might be to raise interest rates. The vast majority of attendees did not believe that was their base case. Of course, we are not taking things off the table.”</span><span>//</span><span>Reporter: “Is the lack of change in interest rate forecasts because you think the oil shock will be temporary, or because you want to be sure of your position if growth starts to slow?”</span><span>Powell: “So what I really want to stress is, no one knows. You know, the economic impact could be bigger, it could be smaller, it could be smaller or bigger. We just don’t know. So people write things that seem meaningful to them but are not convincing, you know? Just your “Perspective, if we have high gas prices, if we have much higher gas prices for a long time, that will put pressure on consumption, and now it will put pressure on personal disposable income, which will also put pressure on consumption. “But we don’t know if something completely different than expected will happen. ” // </span><span>“However, we also think it is important to keep policy moderately constrained or close to constraint, but with downside risks to the labor market softening, we are balancing those two objectives. We are balancing those two objectives because the risk to the labor market is to the downside, which will require lower rates, and the risk to inflation is to the upside, which will require higher rates or no rate cuts anyway. So we are in a difficult position and we feel that our framework is calling us to balance the risks and we feel now on the higher border of restrictive versus non-restrictive.”</span><span>Commenting on a summary of the Fed’s economic forecasts released with the outcome of the Fed meeting, Powell said: “This is one of those SEPs that a lot of people have mentioned would be a good option if we were to skip an SEP because given the uncertainty of war, we just don’t know” what’s going to happen.</span>
