Fed Powell says Fed will fix inflation, calls stable prices 'bedrock' of economy

The Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said on Thursday that the US central bank's battle to control inflation would "include some pain" as the impact of higher interest rates is felt, but that the worse outcome would be for prices to continue speeding ahead."

''We fully understand and appreciate how painful inflation is," Powell said in an interview with the Marketplace national radio program, repeating his expectation that the Fed will raise interest rates by half a percentage point at each of its next two policy meetings while pledging that if data turn the wrong way "we're prepared to do more.""

''Nothing in the economy works, the economy doesn’t work for anybody without price stability," Powell said.

"We went through periods in our history where inflation was quite high ... The process of getting inflation down to 2% will also include some pain, but ultimately the most painful thing would be if we were to fail to deal with it and inflation were to get entrenched in the economy at high levels, and we know what that's like. And that's just people losing the value of their paycheck."

Meanwhile, the US dollar has made a fresh 20-year high on Thursday due to the persisting concerns that the Fed's actions to drive down high inflation would crimp global economic growth, boosting the currency's safe-haven appeal.