Yellen highlights intense money tightening

United States Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen said the Federal Reserve could not bring inflation down to around two percent by next year. Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s giant step of increasing the benchmark rate by 0.75 percentage points and warning that the Fed wouldn’t consider dropping the rates before there are actual signals indicating a slowdown of inflationary pressure around 2 percent signaled a possible fourth giant step; In addition to that Secretary Yellen also highlighted the continuous need of tightening monetary policy.

“It won’t be easy to meet the two-percent inflation target by 2023, but I am confident that the Fed is capable of taming inflation,” Yellen said.

Amid mounting fears that the Fed’s aggressive tightening could trigger a deepening recession, the Kospi closed below the 2,300-mark Friday as the index dropped by 1.81 percent, or 42.31 points, to 2,290.00. It is the lowest since October 30, 2020, when the Kospi dropped to 2,267.15. In addition, it has been two months since the Kospi dropped below 2,300 when it hit 2,292.01 points on July 6.


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