and axios chief correspondent neil irwin.e geopolitical concerns with the tensions with russia, but also people are worried about rates rising. are they forgetting that rates rising, all of this is a sign that we have a strong economy, that the federal reserve no longer needs to breast-feed the stock market indefinitely? >> so, let me take two parts of that. first, i think the geopolitical issue is a real one and a real risk, but that's not what's been moving the market. what is moving the market is what the federal reserve may or may not do, and effectively whether they're going to hike rates and how fast they're going to hike rates and what that does to demand. are they effectively dampening demand. it's very hard for them to change the supply issues that we have in this country right now. it's another thing for them to change the demand picture, and there's what this is all about. if they do change the demand picture, it raises all sorts of questions for how much risk investors going to take, and you're seeing that play ou

we'll go to neil irwin. reporter: thank you, chair powell, neil irwin from "axios."lad to be back. sir, i was wondering if the volatility we've seen in financial markets the last two weeks strikes you as anything alarming might affect the trajectory of policy? conversely to the degree financial conditions tightened some, might not be desirable some ways achieving your tightening goals? >> so as you know the ultimate focus that we have is on the real economy, maximum employment, price stability and financial conditions matter to the extent they have implications for achieving the dual mandate. you also know that we look at broader financial conditions, not one are two things, not one or two markets and what we're always asking ourselves is, are we seeing changes both persist ten and material enough of a change in financial conditions they are inconsistent with the achievement of our goals. so that is how we're looking at that i don't want to comment on today's financial conditions broadly but we're not looking at any one market or so. so that is how we're thinking. in

. >> thank you now going to neil irwin. >> thank you, chair powell neil from axios. the volatility in the last few weeks stretches anything alarming or affect policy to the degree that conditions tightened couldn't that achieve the tightening goals >> so, as you know, the ultimate focus is on the real economy, maximum employment and price stability and financial conditions matter for achieving the dual mandate and look at broad irconditions not one or two markets what we are always asking ourselves is are we seeing changes that are material enough of a change in conditions that they are inconsistent with the goals. that's how we look at that and i don't want to comment on today's financial conditions broadly but we're not looking at any one market that's how we're thinking. in terms of what we have seen i would say this we said at our last meeting published this summary of economic projections expected three rate increases this year and six weeks, seven weeks later now and you have seen that the communication channel with the markets is working. markets are pricing i

they had a conversation with "axios's" neil irwin and said they think it is a one-off, that this is temporaryary to a lot of other economic trends that are out there. all of the other economic trends they point to they say will be an anomaly but a huge headline. >> white house aides blowing up the phones in recent days saying, hey, look, this friday might be bad, but these overall trends are good. we'll watch for it as the weeks go on. mike, a bevy of athletes are currently in beijing preparing for the olympic which opened friday on nbc, family of networks. what are they saying about the experience so far? >> well, jonathan, this is the tightest restrictions around a sporting event ever according to people who follow global sports. listen to this, jonathan. what we used to call the bubble, now they're caused it the closed loop in beijing for the games which start friday, this is designed to completely separate competitors, officials, journalists from the people of china to the extent that, jonathan, the chinese citizens are being told if an olympics vehicle or bus crashes don't help it, you c