It’ll likely take “longer than previously expected” for Fed officials to gain sufficient confidence in the disinflation path to brave rate cuts. Beyond that, Jerome Powell’s flying just as blind as anyone else.

That was the overarching message from a somewhat raspy Powell on Wednesday, when the Fed left rates unchanged for a sixth meeting and lamented a “lack of further progress” towards the Committee’s inflation target.

Powell’s responses and rejoinders during the post-meeting press conference felt unmistakably obfuscatory. It wasn’t his finest performance, but equities found something to like — as they’re wont to do.

Right out of the gate, Powell was pressed on the possibility that policy isn’t actually all that restrictive if it’s restrictive at all. In remarks that surely drove critics into conniptions, Powell said the “evidence clearly shows policy is weighing on demand.”

In defense of that contention, he cited (of all things) the bulletproof US labor market, which is currently adding 276,000 jobs per month on average. He pointed reporters to Wednesday’s JOLTS release. Job openings fell to a three-year low as quits and hiring rates moderated, the BLS figures showed.

“I do think it’s clear that policy is restrictive,” he went on. “Is it sufficiently restrictive?” a clever reporter shot back. “The data will answer that,” Powell said. (The data is answering that. That’s the whole point. Powell’s talking everybody, himself included, in circles.)

Someone asked about Michelle Bowman who — bless her — never really gave up on the final rate hike she wanted late last year. Powell didn’t address Bowman specifically, but said that as far as he knows, “It’s unlikely that the next policy move will be a hike.” Although US equities closed marginally lower, that comment appeared to temporarily brighten the mood among bulls, some of whom might’ve already latched onto the lower-than-expected runoff caps for Treasurys in the QT taper parameters.

Asked if the Fed’s dropped its easing bias in light of the new statement language lamenting a loss of progress towards 2% inflation, Powell delivered a word salad. “Totality” was in there, so was “well positioned,” “greater confidence,” “unexpected” and “labor market.” A lot of his responses on Wednesday were some combination of those words and terms tossed and re-tossed.

“To what extent has the easing in financial condition contributed to the re-acceleration in growth?” Nick Timiraos asked. It was an irksome question. Timiraos was effectively asking if the Fed’s dovish pivot in Q4 sowed the seeds for its own demise. “It’s hard to know,” Powell said, after splitting hairs by noting that growth, in a strict sense, actually hasn’t re-accelerated. “I don’t know that there’s an obvious connection.”

Again, that’ll drive critics crazy. Powell made it worse: In the very next breath, he emphasized the connection between tighter financial conditions and disinflation in 2023. So, tighter financial conditions are conducive to lower inflation, but if the question’s whether easier conditions might be conducive to higher inflation, it’s “hard to know.”

“It’s May now. Do you have time to cut rates this year given the calendar?” WaPo’s Rachel Siegel wondered. “Yeah, I’m not really thinking about it that way,” Powell responded. “I don’t know how long it’ll take [but] when we get that confidence, rate cuts will be in scope.”

“Were there any signs” in Q1 that upside data surprises, including hotter-than-expected inflation outcomes, weren’t just a “bumpy road?” Siegel asked, in a follow-up. Powell paused and thought about it. “Not really.”

Steve Liesman suggested the QT taper might be viewed as “contradictory” in the context of rates held at terminal. Powell said that’s not true and emphasized that the Fed’s merely trying to be sure that the Committee isn’t forced into a hard stop on QT by a repeat of September 2019’s funding market mini-crisis.

A reporter from the FT asked Powell if he thinks rates will be lower by year-end, and also if the Committee’s concerned about stagflation. “I’m not dealing in likelihoods,” he said, of the question on rates. “My personal forecast is that we will begin to see further progress on inflation. I don’t know that it’ll be sufficient, I don’t know that it wont.”

As for stagflation, Powell reminded a room full of his juniors that he was actually alive for the last bout. And that whatever this is, it’s not that. “I don’t see the stag- or the -flation, actually,” he quipped.

Asked if the Fed would be prepared to sacrifice an objectively desirable economic backdrop of low unemployment, strong growth and only slightly above-target inflation to “get that last half point on PCE,” Powell politely refused to traffic in “complicated hypotheticals.”

Fox asked if the Fed’s “satisfied with 3% inflation for the rest of the year?” Powell’s response was unequivocal. Only it wasn’t. “Of course we’re not satisfied with 3% inflation,” he said. But that was only part of the question. “Is there a time frame on 3% that would trigger a rate hike?” Fox’s reporter pressed. “Clearly monetary policy needs more time to do its job,” Powell said.

Politico wondered if “the bar” for rate changes is higher the closer the Fed gets to the election. “We’re always going to do what we think the right thing is for the economy when we think it’s right [to do it],” Powell insisted. “That’s how everybody around here thinks. If you go down [the political] road, where do you stop?”