Senate confirms Powell for 2nd term as Fed fights inflation

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate on Thursday confirmed Jerome Powell for a second four-year term as Federal Reserve chair, giving bipartisan backing to Powell’s high-stakes efforts to curb the highest inflation in four decades.The 80-19 vote reflected broad support in Congress for the Fed’s drive to combat surging prices through a series of sharp interest rate hikes that could extend well into next year. At that time, the Senate voted 84-13 to confirm him.To some degree, Powell’s support in Congress reflects the blame that most Republicans assign to President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID relief package — rather than to the Fed’s ultra-low rates — for causing high inflation. The Fed’s view that inflation mostly reflected supply shocks that would soon fade “turned out to be wrong,” Powell conceded, “not maybe conceptually wrong, but it’s just taking so much longer for the supply side to heal than we thought.” Christopher Waller, a member of the Fed’s board, said last week that the central bank was partly thrown off by reports last August and September suggesting that the job market was weakening.