The fate of the US economy depends on the course of the pandemic and the Covid-19 vaccine rollout, but the outlook is nonetheless "highly uncertain," Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Wednesday.

"A resurgence in recent months of Covid-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths is causing great hardship for millions of Americans and weighing on economic activity and job creation," the central bank chief said.

He said government spending programs have helped support the economy, but the United States needs to recover at least nine million jobs to reach the goal of full employment.

"Overall economic activity remains below its level before the pandemic, and the path ahead remains highly uncertain," Powell told reporters.

He spoke after the central bank's policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) held its first meeting of 2021 and pledged to keep borrowing rates low until employment has recovered.

It was the first meeting under the presidency of Joe Biden, who took office last week and said defeating the Covid-19 pandemic and pushing through a $1.9 trillion economic rescue plan are his top priorities.

"Support from fiscal policy will help households and businesses weather the downturn as well as limit lasting damage to the economy that could impede the recovery," the central bank chief said.

He also said he was "absolutely sure" he would be able to work well with newly-installed US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who was his predecessor as Fed chair and will lead the charge in pushing Biden's stimulus plan through Congress.

After the coronavirus pandemic derailed the world's largest economy, unemployment surged from a near record low of 3.4 percent to nearly 15 percent, before ending last year at 6.7 percent.

However, Powell said the pandemic drove huge numbers of people out of the workforce, which means "the real unemployment rate is close to 10 percent."

Vaccine hope, hiccups

As the economy grapples with the world's worst coronavirus outbreak, optimism about vaccines has raised hopes that activity can return to normal soon.

But there also have been some setbacks in vaccine distribution and supply, and the FOMC said the course of the recovery will depend "significantly" on the virus and those treatments.

Powell, who said he has received the first of two shots for his Covid-19 vaccine, cautioned that it will be "a struggle" to get enough people injected to achieve herd immunity.

After the United States, like other countries, saw a resurgence of infections late last year, the FOMC noted that the recovery had "moderated in recent months, with weakness concentrated in the sectors most adversely affected by the pandemic."

The FOMC again pledged to keep the benchmark lending rate low until the economy achieves "full employment," in keeping with the Fed's new policy stance.

Even before the pandemic struck, inflation was muted and since then has fallen far below the central bank's two-percent target.

That prompted the central bank to shift its focus to helping the labor market recover, while accepting higher inflation for a while once the economy begins to grow more strongly.

Powell acknowledged that some prices might spike as sectors are able to return to normal, but those transitory effects would not be overly concerning.

Economists like Mickey Levy of Berenberg Capital Markets wondered what happens if inflation rises to two percent or above for a longer period.

"The Fed is comfortable with its current monetary policy stance. Fiscal policy has taken over the spotlight, which the Fed has willingly yielded. Let's see how long this lasts," Levy said in an analysis.

The Fed also committed to keeping its asset purchases at the pace of at least $120 billion per-month, and Powell said it is far too soon to even discuss the possibility of tapering the bond buying program.

Former Rep. Gabby Giffords, whose congressional career effectively ended when a madman tried to assassinate her by putting a bullet in her brain, on Wednesday slammed Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene after a video of the QAnon congresswoman from Georgia went viral.

The video, originally posted to Greene's own YouTube page one year ago, shows her trailing Parkland massacre survivor David Hogg, berating and harassing him for working to pass gun control legislation. "I carry a gun for protection," Greene can be heard in the video shouting. At the time the video was recorded Hogg was 18 or 19 years old.

"'Representative' isn't just a title—it's also a job description," Giffords, who served for five years in the U.S. House of Representatives, tweeted Wednesday afternoon. "Members of Congress should represent our better values of respect, compassion, and decency."

Thinking of @DavidHogg111 and every survivor who has been harassed after losing friends or family to gun violence. “Representative" isn't just a title—it's also a job description. Members of Congress should represent our better values of respect, compassion, and decency. https://t.co/y0axD9dFWq
— Gabrielle Giffords (@GabbyGiffords) January 27, 2021

The video of Greene, who was a congressional candidate when it was recorded, has 4.6 million views.

Former FBI deputy for counterintelligence, Frank Figliuzzi, addressed the Homeland Security bulletin issued Wednesday warning of possible continued terrorism from violent anti-government extremists like the ones who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Speaking to MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace, Figliuzzi began with positive news that this is a bulletin not an alert, which means there's nothing specifically planned soon.

The alert said that there have been increasing threats for the past year from violent domestic extremists motivated by COVID-19 lockdowns and mask mandates.

"Here is the bad news," he continued. "This reflects a discovery of deeply entrenched radicalization in our society. As the agents are going through and arresting and executing search warrants against the insurrectionists, they're likely to discover evidence of bigger planning, a deeper sense of organization than they could have imagined. I know personally from my own observations that the chatter is continuing almost unabated, but this advisory is not only about what they know about what might happen, but it's also a fear of what they're not seeing."

The example he used was that many of these people are moving to use encrypted platforms that law enforcement officials can't see or monitor.

"That's a blind spot for them," he explained. "The other thing, this isn't just partnering with law enforcement. One, yeah, let's put national law enforcement on notice, the highway patrol officer who pulls someone over who yaks about hurting somebody in D.C., but it's also, if you see something, say something. We need that kind of posture as we had after 9/11."

Wallace asked about the bulletin itself, wondering since it has been going on for a year if law enforcement would have found it helpful to have the bulletin sooner.

"My sense, my gut, my experience tells me that when we heard the FBI say that we gave intelligence concerns about violence to the Capitol Police, the Capitol region," said Figliuzzi. "When we hear the Capitol Police produce their own intelligence report, that was even more troubling, and we saw the posture and presence we saw. My gut tells me someone was pulling those strings, and someone said, 'don't issue the warnings, don't get the posture up, don't scare people, don't interfere with what we have.' We need a truly independent commission to get us those answers."

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