Like Ms. Yellen, he carries a thick black binder full of prepared answers to the events.
But where Ms. Yellen, an economist, offered dissertation-like explanations that analysts loved to parse, Mr. Powell delivers clipped, conversational replies meant to get his message across to Main Street, not just Wall Street.
“Because monetary policy affects everyone, I want to start with a plain-English summary of how the economy is doing, what my colleagues and I at the Federal Reserve are trying to do, and why,” he said at the start of one of his early news conferences, in June 2018.
There are limits to that approach. Even if Mr. Powell does not see investors as his sole constituency, market gyrations can make credit harder to come by, slowing the economy. Mr. Powell’s answers have become increasingly scripted and repetitive in concession to that reality.
Sometimes, “it behooves you to be more precise, a little more rigid in your language,” said Julia Coronado, founder of the research firm MacroPolicy Perspectives.
Yet Mr. Powell also has reason to make it clear that the Fed is focused on working Americans in a populist era.
On Tuesday, Mr. Trump suggested yet again that the central bank was putting America at a competitive disadvantage. Those ongoing attacks threaten to chip away at the Fed’s public image at a particularly bad moment, as the central bank sits on the brink of a few hard-to-explain decisions.
Interest rates have fallen to historic lows, leaving policymakers with limited room to control the economy by cutting borrowing costs. The problem demands pre-emptive solutions, which officials are expected to announce in mid-2020. For example, the Fed could formally embrace periods of slightly higher inflation.
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