The federal government needs to keep fighting inflation, despite a drop of more than 5% compared to last year, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said. Inflation currently rests at about 3% but needs to drop to 2%, Powell said in a July 26 Yahoo Finance news story.
"We've covered a lot of ground and the full effects of our tightening are yet to be felt," Powell said to Yahoo Finance. "Inflation remains well above our longer run goal of 2%."
Inflation in the United States reached more than 9% last year, Yahoo Finance reported. As part of its fight against inflation, the Federal Reserve increased its benchmark interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point.
Powell's comments were part of Yahoo Finance's story about Bitcoin's response to a Federal Reserve decision to raise interest rates to a 22-year high. Bitcoin "barely budged" following the rate hike, trading for $29,304, a minimal 0.1% 24-hour increase, according to the news story, which cited CoinGecko.
Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency, and other digital assets also stayed fairly flat. Ethereum's price remained unchanged at $1,859, according to Yahoo News.
During its most recent meeting in June, America's central bank decided to stop raising interest rates. In the previous 18 months, the Fed increased rates just once before, the story reported.
As inflation reached its 40-year high last year, the Federal Reserve began aggressively hiking rates. The value of stocks, shares and cryptocurrencies suffered as the Fed raised rates by 75 basis points four times, Yahoo Finance reported. The nation's central bank paused interest rate hikes during its meeting in June, marking the first time in 18 months that the Fed didn't raise rates.
Powell said it isn't clear whether the Fed will raise rates during its next meeting, the Yahoo Finance report said.
"We haven't made any decisions about future meetings, including the pace in which we’d consider tightening," Powell said to Yahoo Finance.
He also told Yahoo Finance the Federal Open Market Committee would "assess the need for further tightening" on a “meeting by meeting” basis, but that he didn't expect inflation to drop to the Fed's goal of until 2025, the story reported.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin has shot up since the first of this year, when it traded for just less than $17,000 per coin, though still down from its November 2021 all-time high of $69,044, Yahoo Finance noted.
