Skip to content
Subscriber Only
Opinion
Brian Chappatta

Markets Race to Process Latest ‘Powell Pivot’

The Fed chair’s testimony to the Senate Banking Committee indicated a shift to inflation-fighting mode.

Retiring the term “transitory.”

Retiring the term “transitory.”

Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg

Markets just witnessed another “Powell pivot.”

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has long held a sanguine view about this year’s sharp increase in U.S. inflation. Time and again, he wrote off the spike as “transitory” — something that would fix itself over time. In his much-anticipated Jackson Hole speech in August, he presented a one-sided case for why price pressures were no reason for alarm.