Wall Street Journal senior writer Jon Hilsenrath joined The Claman Countdown Wednesday with a reaction to the economic uncertainty in Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell's news conference.
SOON JON HILSENRATH: Because I think it's the story that comes out of this press conference is market volatility. When you put together everything that Jay Powell said, he said, Look this, this recovery is not going to look anything, it hasn't looked like the recovery last time around.'' The plan that they had last time around, after the 08-09 crisis, has to be torn up and thrown out. They came out and raised rates very slowly during the last crisis. They took a long time to do it. They had a very slow unwind of the balance sheet. He says they're tearing that up, and they're going to have discussions meeting by meeting.
The Fed is uncertain how this is going to play out in terms of how fast they're going to have to raise interest rates, how far they're going to have to raise interest rates, and what they're going to have to do to the balance sheet. The volatility index is there. I think the market is digesting that it's uncertain because of the uncertainty of the Fed. The watchword we're going to have for the year 2022 is going to be volatility, and I think it's going to be a volatile year for the market, and that's what Jay Powell triggered today.