Jerome H. Powell, chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve (Fed), said on Thursday that the U.S. economy would not fell into a recession this year, even though the projections of growth rate dropped.
"There's good momentum going into this year," Powell said during an interview at The Economic Club of Washington D.C.
In order to elaborate his view on recession, Powell explained that recession was typically resulted from two factors -- the surging of inflation and the explosion of asset bubbles.
"We don't see the two most basic recent causes of recessions," said the helmsman of the central bank.
However, Fed had lowered the growth forecast of the U.S. economy to 2.3 percent during the latest rate hike in December. World Bank, an international financial institution, also expected the growth rate of the U.S. economy would drop to 2.5 percent in 2019.
As the monetary policy making agency in the United States, Fed recently switched to a more dovish tone for its path of interest rate hikes.
The central bank lowered its projections on the number of rate hikes in 2019 from 3 to 2 during the latest rate hike announcement.
Speaking of the pace of rate hikes, Powell said the Fed "don't actually vote on a path or a plan for interest rates."
"We're in a place where we can be patient and flexible and wait and see what does evolve," Powell said.
According to the minutes of the Fed's Dec. 18-19 monetary policy meeting released Wednesday, Fed policy makers thought they "could afford to be patient" with future rate hikes.
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