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 takeaways

"We have a very difficult judgment call on rates."

"All 19 participants supported decision today."

"There was a real discussion about the case for reducing rates at this meeting."

"Strong majority supported not moving rates at this meeting."

"Policy lags beginning to show up in economy over last 6 months."

"I feel good about where we are."

"We are well positioned to respond to any weakness in the economy, not what we are seeing though."

"We have a lot of room to respond if we saw weakness."

"Wage gains are still at a high level."