Janet yellen still speaking. Do not worry. We will interpret. Varney and company is about to begin. Stuart lets briefly recap what janet yellen has been saying on capitol hill. She says, the fed will continue printing money because of the weak jobs market. Do not know how much. The economy will grow at a faster pace this year. Interest rates will stay the same for a considerable period of time. The bad Winter Weather is partly, mostly to blame. Check the Market Reaction to all of this. The dow is trading at a very narrow range. Interest rates, though, that is a key barometer as to where the market thanks the economy is going. Take a look at this. Down again today. A huge drop yesterday. The stock talk below that whatever it is. Right at 30 a share right now. Same with yelp. It dropped 12 yesterday. Now another 2 . It is being investigated by a shareholder rights firm. Whole foods. It has cut its forecast. Look at that. As you can see, there are some huge moves in individual stocks. Sue lily. A darling stock. The good news, the bad news. Nicole the amazon for some moms. Down about 28 at the moment. It is hitting new lows here. You have the analysts jumping on board and cutting their numbers. It is a laker this year. Zulily, you have to be, obviously, pro act. You need to know what you want. They basically do it in both. That is not necessarily for everybody. It certainly is not for me. I am an overnight girl. Stuart i want to bring you up to date on what janet yellen has been saying. She said there may be a faster pace for the Economic Growth rate later on this year. The market not really going with that opinion from janet yellen. Listen in briefly to what she has to say right now. Definitely relevant to the strength of investments. Thank you very much. We have been very generous to make sure the chairman has plenty of times to answer questions. Thank you very much. Thank you for being here. I want to follow up on something that chairman brady talked about briefly. Milton friedman once said that inflation is everywhere. Today we see that the United States department of agriculture estimates that food costs may go up as much as present. In this mornings wall street journal, a distinguished Federal Reserve historian said the feds focus are not having too much attention on the structuring monthly quarterly data. He says the side affects have ugly consequences. One of the worst is the ultralow Interest Rates for retired persons. It forces them to take substantially greater risks in bank cds. We see people with plans for retirement. Maintaining an extraordinarily low Interest Rate or a decade grading market with distortions, you know, it is nice to talk about being able to control inflation going forward. Last year, it was a percent and a half. Can the Federal Reserve identify , accurately, a change in Economic Conditions and execute and exit strategy before inflation occurs . Never any time in history of this country. Well, i do believe that we have the tools and the will and determination to remove monetary accommodation at an appropriate time to avoid overshooting our inflation object to. The committee, everybody on the committee forms and experience for them. 1970s, we saw very high inflation and a huge effort by chairman volker to tighten Monetary Policy to bring it down. We went through a period in which fed policy was not sufficiently tight. High inflation led to a rise in Inflation Expectations. We saw Inflation Expectations could become a persistent source of high inflation and it could be very costly to lowering inflation. The lessons from that period are very real for all of us. None of us want to make that mistake ever again. I do believe we have the tools and determination to avoid that. We indicate inflationary developments. We watch what the likely evolution of inflation is and i cannot say that let you know, we will get it perfect, but i can tell you that the committee has adopted a 2 inflation object if in order to make clear our commitment to achieving that objective and to be held accountable for it. We are determined to make that happen. Howard that payments, our Interest Payments will exceed our National Defense budget within seven or eight years. I think 2021 is the estimate. All of that working together, we really need to grow our economy to be able to manage that. We want to be able to. Longterm Interest Rates are likely to be rising over time. This is something i think we should certainly be taking into account as you look at what fiscal burdens will be down the road. Thank you. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you, janet yellen for being here. You touched on something a few minutes ago about some deeper structural trends going on in the employment market. You tied those very appropriately to the trends, to the macro trends of globalization and macro type allergy. We have benefited people with access to capital. They have been very disruptive to the average american. This is the root cause of some of the concerns. We are creating high school jobs is it possible . Put us in a position where the fed would have accommodating Monetary Policy for a sustained period of time. Particularly, congress doing things like rough form. It is impossible that that is the new norm and the size of the Federal Reserve talent sheet stays quite large for a reasonable period of time. You know, i think these longerterm trends have to do with relative wages of different groups in the labor force. It has been going on for a long time for the reasons you stated. I do not think that those trends are ones that the Federal Reserve can really address. In that sense, when the labor market has returned to normal, in the sense that most people who are looking for work are able to find work for which they are suited and skilled in a reasonable period of time, there really will not be much more, as in our domain that we can do. We would not keep our balance she large or refrain from restraining Interest Rates for that reason. There are some people who have suggested that the distribution of income and rising inequality are pulling down spending and holding down spending growth. It is hard to get clear evidence on that. To the extent that that is true, it would be a way in which inequality would be slowing the pace of recovering back to full employment. That would affect how long we would hold our Interest Rates where they are. My second question is around financial educators. Asset bubbles in particular. We have seen a delinking that has gone on between leverage spreads and leverage. We have seen the delay just as we have seen the delinking of equity market values. I think of it more as froth as opposed to formation of asset bubbles. How do you think about these things or what kind of benchmarks do you use to indicate we may in fact be creating asset bubbles in different market . A variety of ways of measuring those. We can look to see evaluations and that sense move out of historically normal ranges. I would say for the equity market as a whole, the answer is that valuations are in historically normal ranges. Interest rates, longterm Interest Rates are low. That is one of the factors that feeds into equity market valuations. There is that linkage. There are pockets where we could see this. Those Broad Networks do not suggest. Thank you very much. Thank you, chair for your presentations here today. I wanted to ask you if you wanted to step faith aside for a moment in terms of representing the fed. Give us some of your personal thoughts if you think it is appropriate . So many of the ceos and owners of those businesses, almost to a person, to indicate that they are underperforming. They are underperforming because of the uncertainty of the case. Relative to prospects of uncertainty of what it will be. Essentially, they say it is an incentive to the private sector there business investment, which, as we know, is the foundation of job creation. Your predecessor, i asked your predecessor the question of whether or not, of what his opinion was relative to the opinion. His answer was, we pretty much exhausted the major tools that we have to address some of these problems. An awful lot of unused capital. He is right. My question is, you made reference to the fact that it will be a gradual return over the next two or three years of Economic Conditions. Given that, would you be willing to give us some direction. Either accelerating that movement to where we really want to get, beyond the two or three year. What recommendations would you give to us in terms of dealing with this uncertainty. I hear exactly the same things that you are siding. Concern about regulations. I guess, one recommendation that i would give you is that longterm budget deficits, we can see. They remain. There is more work to do to put fiscal policy on a sustainable course. Progress has been made over the last several years in bringing down deficits in shortterm. We can see that over the long term deficits will rise to unsustainable levels. I know that these are very controversial matters. It will probably help confidence. We also can see very clearly, for example, the kinds of regulations that we are putting in place during the process of doing that. It creates uncertainty and burdens. Here i would say, to some extent, we are doing this for a very good reason. We had a financial crisis. It is important to make the Financial System safer and sounder. We will try to make sure that we try to worry about regulatory burden. We try to design regulations that are different and appropriate for different sect tours of the economy. I think it is important for us to be sensitive to burden in order to minimize its impact on the economy. Thank you for that answer. I noticed that my time is up. You joined a long list of very responsible americans that have the expertise to give us some warnings about what may happen in the future and the consequences of our inability to act over the last several years now in addressing these major problems that will have significant consequences in the economy of this country. I do not know what it will take. You have a responsibility up here and you are not fulfilling that responsibility. Thank you very much. Good to be with you this morning. I wanted to ask you a couple questions about jobs and the new fracturing. We have a lot to be positive about. When i think about it from a national perspective, good job numbers in the last couple of months and even the recent report, a lot less in the terms of good news. I am told the Participation Rate is at a 45 year low. You said during the economic recovery so far, Payroll Employment has increased. Can you speak in terms of what you would hope to see . Secular will continue. The amount that they work. It declined notably in spite of the fact that retirees are working more in participating more in the labor force than earlier. Nevertheless, if we had a strong economy, it would not surprise me at all if we did not see more participation in the labor force by retirees. In addition, we are seeing for all age groups, a reduction in Labor Force Participation. Especially in those nonretiree demographic groups. To me, it is clear that the weak state of the labor market partly explains why we are seeing a decline in Labor Force Participation. The Unemployment Rate comes down, we need to figure out what portion of the Labor Force Participation decline is secular and what portion is cyclical. That is what we will be looking at very closely. I guess i would expect, as the economy recovers, we may see labor force Participation Rate strength in rather than continue to decline. One thing that we talk about a lot is the skills gap in the disconnect there between the jobs that we need to fill or that need to be created in the future. The skill level of folks that are seeking levels of these jobs. I guess, one of the questions that i have for you is you look at transit all the time, you look at the Economic Impact of policies that we have put in place here. You see those trends in the kind of skills that these folks would need. My youngest daughter is a junior in high school. What would you hope that she would get to be placed in one of those high skill jobs that we hope we are creating. We hope we have policies to get us to the point where we no longer have that kind of skill set. What would you hope that either i or society at large could provide in terms of that . I hope that you and society at large will make sure that she has access to a good college education. The gap in earnings between those with a College Degree and those with less education has increased enormously. Good opportunities to get advanced skills will clearly suggest it will make a difference to her lifelong earnings. Thank you very much. Thank you. Knowing senator casey, she will get a good education. I have no dow. Chairman brady got to a point where he said he was hopeful he would enlighten the committee on six specific points. There is no time for you to answer those. I would like to submit those as my questions for the record. Will you do that . I would be glad to. The last one is about transparency. I understand your reluctance to be tied down to specific predictions of when this or that will happen. I do think we got a yes from you on one thing. That is when the Asset Purchase Program will end. As i understand it, you have a set of expectations for the rest of the year. If those expectations are met, you expect the asset purchase problem to and this fall. Is that a yes . That is correct if the labor market continues to recover and we continue to see to the evidence pointing to inflation moving up over time. The committee is likely to continue taking further steps within the program next fall. In the fall of this year . Correct. Said she saw no sign of rising inflation, you do not agree with that. Ideally, inflation should increase to 2 and that would be a better result, as far as you are can turned. 2 is the committees longerterm objective. It will not be at that level at every moment, but we expect it to move up gradually over time. Great. You mentioned during your testimony today, maximum employment and full employment. Would you define those for the committee the wording shoes in the Federal Reserve act, that congress designed for us and the percentage rate, what is a maximum employment . I interpret maximum employment as meaning the level of employment in the Labour Market where people are able in a reasonable amount to find to gain work. For todays purposes you not put a percentage point. In terms of income inequality. Lets get back to the meltzer article in todays wall street journal. The policies and the Federal Reserve are responsible for fee income inequality, and he says ironically it is often repeated, demands for increased redistribution, and policies pursued by the Obama Administration supported by the Federal Reserve have accomplished the opposite. He goes on to say voters recognize boosting the stock market through a very low Interest Rates not to mention subsidies and handouts contributed to that result, for another discussion. Dont you acknowledge the Interest Rates which you have achieved, the stock market, therefore boosting stock market, contributing to this distribution of income . I would not deny that the level of Interest Rates fixed the stock market, would hardly endorse the term boosting the stock market. We have no target for stock prices. The policies we have undertaken are meant to ease financial conditions and a whole variety of ways that will be conducive to generating greater spending and greater spending means we create jobs throughout the economy. I would take issue with a stronger economy. The variety of households throughout the economy including lower income households who are gaining jobs. We have an impact on the stock market and impact on housing prices. Housing prices come back up again. Middle income households, the most important asset. The return of house prices to normal levels, i think, has been a major benefit to Many American households. They have seen themselves move from situations when theyre under water on their mortgages to being back in the black and helps give them access to credit if they want to send a kid to school or have an emergency or start a Small Business. There have been benefits in this policy and the policies we have pursued for main street as well as those who hold equities in their portfolios. Thank you. Senator sanders. Thank you, mr. Chairman, will command good luck on your new endeavor. Mr. Chairman, with your permission i will put into the record a recent bbc article entitled u. S. Is an oligarchy, not a democracy. Chairman, is that right . Chairman . Can i placed it into the record . Without objection. Madam chair, in the u. S. Today the top 1 own 38 of the financial wealth of america, the bottom 60 own 2. 3 . One family is worth over 140 billion, more wealth than the bottom 40 of the American People in recent years, we have seen a huge increase in the number of millionaires and billionaires while we continue to have the highest rate of childhood poverty in the industrialized world. Despite as many of my republican friends talk about the oppressive obama economic policies in the last year charles and