Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell explains the decision to leave the policy rate, federal funds rate, unchanged at the range of 5.25-5.5% and responds to questions in the post-meeting press conference.

Key quotes

"We need greater confidence that inflation is moving sustainably down."

"We have confidence, but we want to see more data, continuation of good data."

"We had very strong growth last year."

"A year ago we thought we needed some economic softening."

"We want to see strong growth, strong labor market."

"We don't think we necessarily need to see weaker growth for inflation to come down."

"We want inflation to continue to come down."

"We need to see more evidence that confirms what we think we are seeing, gives us confidence we are on sustainable path to 2% inflation