Analyst: The key is whether Powell will focus on policy rather than data
Ellen Hazen, chief market strategist at F.L. PUTNAM Investment Management, said the key question is that a lot of the policies that have been announced are likely to cause inflation. The question for Powell at the press conference will be whether to start looking at policy, not data, so they don't fall behind the curve, especially given that there was a problem with ignoring fiscal policy in 2021-2022 that could cause inflation to be unexpectedly high before they had to step in. If they had reacted to fiscal policy at the time, inflation probably wouldn't have been this high. So that's a big question.