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What J-Powell says and what J-Powell means? We shall try to decipher from American public media. This is Marketplace.

In Los Angeles, I'm kind of rised all day. It is Wednesday today, the 21st day of June. Good as always to have you along.

Everybody Google Maps says it's about a 15 20 minute drive from the Federal Reserve building in Washington, DC up to Capitol Hill.

One imagines Fed Chair J-Powell spent that time in the car this morning going over his opening statement and reviewing answers his staff prepared to whatever questions law makers might come up with fairly standard bureaucratic stuff.

Except this week's hearings at which Powell is the guest of honor, the House Financial Services Committee today, Senate banking tomorrow, were the first since Powell and the gang decided to skip a meeting and leave interest rates where they are.

Powell being Powell, he stuck pretty much to the same script he used after last week's no rate hike meeting at the hearings today, but Powell also being Powell, he is clearly trying to tell us something, us being us consumers, but also investors and lawmakers too.

But if he says the same thing all the time, what's he really trying to say? Marketplace's Mitchell Hartman drew the short straw.

There have been two messages coming from J-Powell since last week's no rate hike Fed meeting. One, we're pausing to see if past rate hikes have done enough to fight inflation. Two, we're really serious about that inflation fight, we'll do whatever it takes to win.

Former Fed Governor Frederick Michigan doesn't see any big contradiction here, he says Powell needs to be clear because he got inflation so wrong in 2021 when he called it transitory and it wasn't.

Once you actually make a mistake like that, it's even more imperative to lean in the direction of actually being tough.

But not everyone sees consistency in Powell's words. Dean Baker at the Center for Economic and Policy Research says there are two camps on the Fed,

doves who think inflation is coming down enough and hawks who believe inflation is not vanquished yet. He says Powell is caught between them.

Trying to maintain consensus that okay, we're going to hold but we're going to leave open the option that we might well have further hikes so you get this kind of talking out of both side of his mouth.

It sure leaves me confused investors to says Quincy Crosby at LPL financial.

The market is perplexed. Where does Powell fit in this equation in terms of the need to continue racing rates.

And I think that's why you're confused because he seems to me and her into both monetary paths.

Powell has been clear that the Fed will act based on the actual inflation data says Crosby and that the hard work of getting inflation under control is mostly done, meaning slower and smaller rate hiking from now on.

I'm Mitchell Hartman for Marketplace Wall Street on this Thursday tech had a lousy day other sectors less lousy will have the details when we do the numbers.

Mitchell was just given us the skinny on J. Powell's testimony and how we all well, I mean, you know, some of us anyway hang on his every word.

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