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Chairman Powell, let me ask you this one overarching question.
Obviously, interest rates, if you compare it over the last 15 years of monetary policy, is at an elevated rate.
Does the Fed anticipate any possibility of rates being lowered, whether it's 50 basis points, 100 basis points, at some point over the next year or two?
So, I guess the question really is, where are interest rates going to settle out when all of the effects of the pandemic are really done?
And no one knows.
This is a great discussion to have.
But I think my sense, and pretty commonly people think, we probably won't go back to that era between the global financial crisis and the pandemic, where rates were very, very low, and inflation was very low.
And, you know, like extremely low.
There were major European countries that had negative 10-year bond rates, negative.
And that was not the case here.
But I don't think we're going back to rates that are that low.
We think that things like the neutral rate are driven by slow-moving forces.
But ultimately, you can see the effect.
We have, you know, our policy rate is over 5% now.
And it feels like policy is restrictive, but not, you know, intensely restrictive.
So that suggests that the neutral rate of interest, at least as of now, will have risen somewhat, which means rates will be a little higher.
Okay.
Thank you so much.
I yield back.