Fed Chair Powell says he sees ‘froth in equities markets’ when asked about dogecoin and GameStop

During a press conference on Wednesday, Jerome Powell, chairman of the Federal Reserve, gave his thoughts on the wilder elements of U.S. markets.

His remarks came in response to a question from Yahoo Finance’s Brian Cheung regarding potential concerns about financial stability related to trading in stocks like GameStop and dogecoin trading.

“Many people just look at asset prices and they look at some of the things going on in the equities markets. And I think they reflect froth in the equities markets,” said Powell, who did not mention either dogecoin or Gamestop in his response. “But really we try to stick to a framework so that we can talk about it and be held accountable for it.”

Powell denied concerns that quantitative easing had caused the froth in question. He instead attributed recent surges in trading to an economy recovering from Covid-19 amid a successful vaccination campaign.

Elsewhere during his appearance, Powell said of central bank digital currencies: “Central bank digital currencies are now possible and we’re going to see some of them around the world.”

He continued to refute the need to accelerate the Federal Reserve’s work to issue a digitized dollar. “I’m less concerned that another country might have another digital currency first.”

Contributed by The Block.