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Good afternoon.
My colleagues and I remain squarely focused on achieving our dual mandate goals of maximum employment
and stable prices for the benefit of the American people.
The Federal Reserve announced this afternoon it would keep interest rates steady.
Today, the FOMC decided to leave our policy rate unchanged.
That's in spite of spiking oil prices and new market uncertainty driven by the Iran war.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell took the podium to explain the rationale behind today's decision.
The implications of events in the Middle East for the U.S. economy are uncertain.
In the near term, higher energy prices will push up overall inflation,
but it is too soon to know the scope and duration of the potential effects on the economy.
Bloomberg Fed reporter Amira Amokwe says that the Fed is essentially in wait-and-see mode
when it comes to the conflict and the impacts it could have on the economy.
Obviously, energy, oil, those are all inputs that matter for production, for service-producing businesses.
And so if you start to see inflationary pressures sort of broaden beyond the energy sector itself into other parts of the economy,
that I think would be of concern to Fed policymakers.
But they will also then be watching the real side of the economy.