The Fed has caught plenty of heat as to whether its succession of rate hikes came too late.
But in hindsight, even if the Fed was late to the party, it might not have made a difference, according to Jerome Powell.
"Did it matter in the end? I really don't think it did," the Fed chair said. "I'm not sure it would have mattered if we'd been raising rates earlier. Lots of central banks were raising rates three months earlier and it didn't matter."
He added: "This is a global phenomenon happening now."
Late or not, the back-to-back 75-basis-point hikes were the appropriate moves given the current economic state, Powell said.
The unexpectedly hotter Consumer Price Index reading earlier this month had Wall Street buzzing that the Fed might raise rates by a full percentage point. Powell noted that the Fed "wouldn't hesitate" to go even bigger, if the circumstances warranted it. That wasn't the case, at least not this time around,
"We judged a 75 basis point increase was the right magnitude in context of the increases in policy rate [changes] we've been making," he said.
