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Gold prices hold daily gains as Fed's Powell maintains hawkish bias; is not confidence inflation is under control
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(Kitco News) - The gold market is holding on to modest gains as Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell maintains his tightening bias, saying that while inflation has come down, the central bank still is not confident that it has it under control.
Powel spoke during a panel discussion at the International Monetary Fund's Jacques Polak Annual Research Conference in Washington, D.C.
"The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) is committed to achieving a stance of monetary policy that is sufficiently restrictive to bring inflation down to 2 percent over time; we are not confident that we have achieved such a stance," Powell said in a prepared statement.
Powell added that improving supply issues in the economy has helped to bring down inflation from 40-year highs seen in June 2022; however, he said that improving economic conditions has gone as far as they can go to bring inflation down.
"Going forward, it may be that a greater share of the progress in reducing inflation will have to come from tight monetary policy restraining the growth of aggregate demand," he said.
The gold market is not seeing much reaction to Powell's hawkish comments. December gold futures last traded at $1,964.80 an ounce, up 0.36% on the day. The precious metal has managed to hold solid support at around $1.950 an ounce.
Not related to monetary policy, but Powell was initially interrupted by a climate-change protestor. Powell was caught on a hot microphone swearing, saying, "Just close the f**ing door."
