[dsugarman]

Frankly I think you're answering your own question when you say "the Fed tends to err on the side of triggering a recession." Yea that's the point, maybe it would be less offensive to say they view their job as creating as mild of a recession as possible to bring down inflation.

In response to your direct request, here's Powell talking about a "soft or softish" landing specifically calling it a recession that is not severe. https://youtu.be/Ue1aDKboQcQ?si=HRcPcJFT22kYxYQT

I find the whole back patting themselves on a "soft landing" a total joke and offensive to the American tax payers. They create so much pain, especially to those without net worth, in the name of stalling inflation when inflation is directly caused by money supply. They created the problem not with 0 interest rates but by literally injecting cash into the economy, they lied about it's effect on inflation and then they could have sat on their hands and inflation would have evened out without destroying everyone's bank accounts. They really don't need play God on the economy, it creates more problems than it solves

[KMag]

That video link begins with "I believe there is a path to a soft or soft-ish landing", followed by a definition of a soft landing as unemployment not going up too much.

It seems he's pretty clearly describing what he believes is possible, not describing what he wants absent constraints imposed by reality.

It's pretty easy to play armchair economist, as the first-order effects of Fed intervention during COVID were pretty painful for a lot of middle- and lower-class Americans, at least those who would have kept their jobs even without intervention. Which models are you using and what do your models show the unemployment rate would have hit without any Fed intervention? How long would the COVID recession lasted without intervention? The question isn't "Were the Fed's actions harmful?" the question is "Were the Fed's actions less harmful than available alternatives?"