If Powell Is Angry And Disgusted, That’s A Small Positve

According to one research company, new Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell was disgusted and angry at his press conference yesterday. The firm, Prattle, employed facial recognition software to track Powell’s expressions throughout his inaugural press conference. By their count, he was disgusted 36 times, angry 41 times, and expressed contempt another five. Powell conveyed joy on a mere four instances.

These labels are surely overstating the degree to which Powell showed any emotion. His emerging talent, if it may be called that, is more Greenspan-like (not a compliment). He will say a lot without saying much. For the maestro, at least, that was by design. For Powell, I’m starting to believe that’s all there is.

These apparent negative emotional expressions correlated mostly with questions about inflation. No surprise there, nobody at the Fed has any answers and haven’t for years now. Whether it has been oil prices or Verizon’s unlimited data plans, there’s always something in the way of meeting the central bank’s explicit inflation target – the joint legacy project of both Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen (one of the more legitimately interesting parts of their joint appearance at Brookings recently was both discussing their recollection of 1990’s arguments on explicit targeting and Alan Greenspan’s objections to it).

But if Powell is angry about being unable to answer for six years of undershooting inflation, of the few times he was happy it was in talking about the current state of the economy. According to this key policymaker, things are really going well. Really well.

It’s true that rates are the higher they’ve been for 10 years, but also the economy is the healthiest it’s been for 10 years, since before the financial crisis, so it’s a healthier economy than it’s been for 10 years.

Prattle scored that comment under “joy.”

This is Powell’s biggest fault, a mistake Greenspan would never make. By what standard is he claiming this? There is only one that fits the definition, and that’s the unemployment rate which is causing all this disgust and anger about inflation.