Powell Slightly Hawkish Ahead of December Meeting

The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite indexes both gained about 1% and 1.5% in the moments following Powell’s speech

share

Inflation is far from over, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Wednesday, but a rate-hike slowdown is still on the table for December. Regardless, according to the central bank head, rates will keep rising and remain high “for some time.” 

“It will take substantially more evidence to give comfort that inflation is actually declining,” Powell said during an appearance at the Brookings Institute in Washington. “By any standard, inflation remains much too high.”

Markets immediately rallied on the news. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite indexes both gained about 1% and 1.5% in the moments following Powell’s speech, respectively. Crypto also jumped into the green, with bitcoin and ether rising 3% and 5.3%, respectively. 

“We need to raise interest rates to a level that is sufficiently restrictive to return inflation to 2%,” Powell said. “There’s considerable uncertainty about what rate will be sufficient.”

Stable prices can only be achieved through supply and demand management, Powell said — adding that reaching the central bank’s inflation target is likely going to require more-tempered growth. Waning of pandemic-era easy monetary policy, raising housing prices and global unrest have also contributed to the economy’s sluggish pace, Powell added. 

The speech comes weeks after the Fed’s last rate-setting meeting on Nov. 2 when the central bank opted to raise interest rates by 0.75% for the fourth straight time. The US central bank cited slowing consumer spending and production levels.

In June, when the central bank opted to raise rates 75 basis points for the first time this cycle, Powell called the move “unusually large.”  But if current conditions persist, higher increases could become the norm, he later warned.


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily, with Byron Gilliam.

Upcoming Events

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

recent research

Research Report Templates (11).png

Research

We believe that Exponent is best positioned to dominate the Solana yield market – the fastest-growing sector in the ecosystem – with topline liquidity increasing at an annualized rate of nearly 600%. The founding team (ex-Squads, Kamino, Solana Foundation) cares deeply about product, security, design, and user experience and understands the foundation for building a great protocol. The team’s deep ties in Solana DeFi also present a significant strategic advantage, as evidenced by Exponent PTs being onboarded as collateral on Kamino, Drift, and Loopscale before its main competitor, RateX. In this regard, we view PT integrations in money markets as the most compelling avenue for Exponent to expand its market share and own its vertical.

article-image

Franklin Templeton’s Innovation Head Sandy Kaul says institutions will issue stablecoins and tokenized cash offerings to stay competitive

article-image

Surviving financial doomsday takes some preparation

article-image

Pump.fun’s launch partners include Kraken, Kucoin, Bitget, Bybit, Gate and MEXC

article-image

Monad Foundation’s Keone Hon said the team’s been “thinking about how to grow the onchain economy for some time”

article-image

Cuts to government R&D budgets may prove penny wise, bitcoin foolish

article-image

Still relatively little is known about the memecoin platform’s forthcoming token