Powell Refuses to Bite on GameStop or Tapering
A combative Fed chair keeps his eyes firmly on the central bank’s employment and inflation objectives.
Eye on the ball.
Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell was in no mood on Wednesday to humor questions about the meteoric rise in shares of GameStop Corp. and other “meme stocks.”
In what was probably the most combative press conference since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, he set the tone early by stating, “I don’t want to comment on a particular company or day’s market activity” in response to the first question about GameStop. “The connection between low interest rates and asset values is probably something that’s not as tight as people think,” he said a bit later, arguing that “if you look at what’s really been driving asset prices in the last couple of months, it isn’t monetary policy, it’s been expectations of vaccines and fiscal policy.” Then he scoffed in response to a question from my Bloomberg colleague Michael McKee about whether he and other officials would consider adjusting Regulation T, which sets initial margin requirements, to head off excess speculation: “No, we haven’t done that.”