Instant Reaction: Jay Powell on the Fed Decision
Bloomberg Surveillance
Bloomberg
3.8 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 30 July 2025
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Bloomberg's Tom Keene, Jonathan Ferro and Lisa Abramowicz discuss remarks from Fed Chair Jay Powell following the Federal Reserve's latest policy decision on a special edition of Bloomberg Surveillance|
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said interest rates are in the right place to manage continued uncertainty around tariffs and inflation, tempering expectations for a rate cut in September.
“There are many, many uncertainties left to resolve,” Powell told reporters Wednesday following the central bank’s decision to once again keep rates unchanged. “It doesn’t feel like we are very close to the end of that process.”
The Federal Open Market Committee voted 9-2 to hold its benchmark federal funds rate in a range of 4.25%-4.5%, as they have at each of their meetings this year. Governors Christopher Waller and Michelle Bowman voted against the decision in favor of a quarter-point cut.
Traders pared back their expectations for rate cuts as Powell spoke. Interest-rate futures indicated roughly even odds on a reduction at the next meeting in September, down from about 60% earlier in the day. Treasuries extended losses, the dollar surged to the highest since May and the S&P 500 fell.
In their post-meeting statement, officials downgraded their view of the US economy, saying “recent indicators suggest that growth of economic activity moderated in the first half of the year.” The Fed had previously characterized growth as expanding “at a solid pace.”
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hi, I'm Lisa Mateo, introducing you to the new Stockmovers report from Bloomberg. |
| 0:08.6 | These are short audio reports, five minutes or less, delivered right to your podcast feed throughout the day. |
| 0:15.2 | Stockmovers fills you in on the day's winners and losers on Wall Street and tells you about the news and data that's |
| 0:21.0 | driving those gains and losses. If you want to stay plugged into the stock market, but don't |
| 0:25.9 | want to spend all day watching tickers scroll across your screen, then Stock Movers is a place for you |
| 0:32.0 | to get informed. Listen a couple times throughout the day to find out what's moving equities and why. |
| 0:39.0 | Search for stock movers on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere else you listen. |
| 0:44.4 | Get the latest stock news and data backed by reporting from Bloomberg's 3,000 journalists and analysts across the globe. |
| 0:53.0 | Subscribe to Stockmovers, wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 1:00.4 | Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts Radio News. The chairman of the Federal Reserve, his words, |
| 1:10.4 | this was one of the better meetings that I can recall. Maybe you had to be there. In the equity market, we look like this. Equity's shaping up as follows, down by about two-tenths of 1% on the S&P 500 on the NASDAQ positive by 0.04. The gains fading. If you check out the bond market, two-year 10, year, 30 year, unlocking this move right here. |
| 1:28.4 | Yields up at the front end of the curve by six basis points. The two year, three, 93. And when you |
| 1:33.7 | push that through foreign exchange, you get some real dollar strength, Eurodollar down to 114 this afternoon |
| 1:40.4 | and down by one four percentage point. Now, perhaps these market moves to have you more |
| 1:44.4 | about positioning than it does about the Fed meeting itself. But there is one point attention |
| 1:48.6 | that I think is very much worth exploring. And it's on the labor market. Governor Waller is |
| 1:52.9 | making the point that this labor market is on the edge. Chairman Powell has a different view of |
| 1:57.6 | things. Take a listen. If you look at the labor market, what you see is, by many, many statistics, the labor market is kind of still in balance. |
| 2:06.6 | It's things like quits, you know, job openings and, let alone the unemployment rate. |
| 2:13.6 | They're all very, by many measures, very similar to where they were a year ago. So you do not |
| 2:18.4 | see weakening in the labor market. Two headlines crossing in the last 45 minutes, I think |
| 2:23.3 | articulating the Federal Reserve Chair's bias, a clear bias to wait. One, the totality of the |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Bloomberg, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Bloomberg and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.