• Economic growth and "rapid gains" in the employment picture are supporting the central bank's decision to accelerate the tapering of its asset purchase program, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said during his post-FOMC press conference.
• The recent increase in COVID and the emergence of the Omicron variant "poses risk to the outlook," he said.
• "The economy no longer needs increasing amounts of policy support," Powell said.

• 3:30 PM ET: "I'm not troubled where the long bond is. We're focused on broader economic issues," he said.

• 3:23 PM ET: The central bank committee "hasn't made any decision at all" on when balance sheet runoff will start. "We did have a balance sheet issue discussion, we'll have another at the next meeting... we didn't make any decisions today."
• 3:22 PM ET:Asset purchase decisions and raising interest rates are two separate decisions. The policymakers haven't yet discussed whether the higher interest rates will immediately follow the winding down of the taper.
• 3:20 PM ET:"We are at a point after March that we can raise interest rates as and when appropriate," he said.

• 3:18 PM ET: He thinks cryptocurrency risks are a longer-term risk doesn't think of them as a financial stability concern. Also, he commented that stablecoins are not currently property regulated.

• 3:16 PM ET: "Asset valuations are somewhat elevated," he  In terms of financial risks, "businesses have debt, but their default rates are very low." Money market funds are a vulnerability. Cyber risk is harder to deal with, he said.

• 3:13 PM ET: "The risk of inflation becoming entrenched has increased. I don't think it's high, but it has increased," the Fed chair said. That's a major risk, along with the virus itself, he said.

• 3:12 PM ET:Consumer incomes are strong, and spending has been strong, he notes. "We expect personal consumption expenditures to be very strong in the fourth quarter," he said.

• As of 3:09 PM ET, the Nasdaq climbs 1.0%, the S&P rises 0.9%, and the Dowgains 0.5%.
• 3:08 PM ET:"It will take time and to get the pandemic under control" to produce gains in the labor force participation rate, he said.

• 3:03 PM ET: "The inflation that we got was not at all the inflation we were talking about or looking for in the framework," Powell said. The post-pandemic inflation was triggered by supply-side barriers, "a very different kind of inflation" that was considered in the Fed's policy framework.

• 2:58 PM ET: Turning to inflation: "Wages are not a big part of the high inflation that we're seeing," he said. The Fed needs to watch for is if wages were persistently above productivity growth, he added, "we don't see that yet." They're also carefully watching rent increases.

• 2:56 PM ET:Powell decided the Fed needed to speed up the taper after the November employment report came out in early December.

• 2:53 PM:Even with Omicron posing a risk to the economic outlook, Powell said accelerating the taper is warranted. At this point, "it's very difficult to say what the economic effect will be... Moving forward the end of the taper is appropriate and Omicron doesn’t have much to do with it."

• 2:47 PM:While the unemployment rate has improved quickly and stands at about 4.2%, the labor force participation rate has been disappointing, he said. "I do think it feels likely now that the return to higher LFP is going to take longer."

• 2:44 PM: He doesn't expect the Fed to start raising rates before the taper ends. It "wouldn't be appropriate" to raise rates while still increasing asset purchases, he said.
• 2:42 PM ET:"We're basically two meetings away from finishing the taper," he noted.
• 2:40 PM ET:When asked what maximum employment looks like, Powell said it entails a "broad range of indicators," such as the unemployment rate, labor force participation rate, and others. "It is admittedly a judgment call because it's a range of factors. We are making rapid progress toward maximum employment."
• Earlier, the Federal Open Market Committee doubled the pace of tapering to $30B per month as inflation remained elevated and the labor market stayed strong.
• The faster pace of winding down the central bank's asset purchases puts it on track to boost rates earlier. Now all of the Fed officials expect at least one rate hike during 2022, with two-thirds of them predicting at least three 25-basis point increases during the year.