"Chair Powell, what's the value in pausing and signaling future hikes versus just hiking now?" asked Nick Timiraos from the WSJ. "I mean, not to be flippant, but I don't lose weight just by buying a gym membership; I have to actually go to the gym," continued the reporter, as his colleagues in the press corps looked on in awe, praying to someday engineer such a perfect question, delivered so casually, beautifully. "Sixteen of your colleagues put down a higher year-end '23 rate today. A majority of you think you're going to have to go up by 50 basis points this year. So why not just rip off the Band-Aid and raise rates today?"

"We're two-and-a-half years into this or two-and-a-quarter years into this," said the Fed Chairman at his press conference, leaving interest rates unchanged at 5.00-5.25%, below the latest 5.3% annual core CPI. "And forecasters, including Fed forecasters, have consistently thought that inflation was about to turn down, and, you know, typically forecasted that it would, and been wrong," continued Powell.