Jerome Powell: “As long as the economy is in solid shape, we think the prudent thing to do is to wait and see what those effects might…”

It is a big risk to our independence if we were to stray into areas where we shouldn’t that really aren’t part of our mandate.

I have a little more than 10 months left on my term as chair, and all I want, and all anyone at the Fed wants, is to deliver an economy that has price stability, maximum employment, financial stability.

So we didn't overreact — in fact, we didn't react at all. We're simply taking some time.

If we're going to do that successfully, we need to do it in a completely nonpolitical way, which means we don't take sides, we don't play one side against the other, we stay out of issues that are really not our bailiwick.