For all those who were wondering why Powell would leave the market - which had made its expectation for some sort of POMO announcement today very clear - hanging so badly, sending risk assets and gold tumbling and the dollar surging, Powell finally felt some pity for the world's liquidity addicts when he hinted that QE is indeed coming, just not today. To wit:

“It is certainly possible that we’ll need to resume the organic growth of the balance sheet sooner than we thought.”

And just in case that was confusing, Powell also said that the Fed would revisit the question of returning to "organic growth" in the intermeeting period.

It wasn't clear how the Fed injecting liquidity equates to "organic growth" of the balance sheet, but we'll leave that for the pedants.

The moments Powell confirmed that QE4 is indeed on the way, around 2:50pm ET, stocks spiked, and the dollar slumped.

And so with expectations thus set, the thing that will be necessary for Powell to launch QE4 - i.e., the "Fed needs another Lehman" moment we predicted yesterday...

8% in repo means Fed has to do QE yesterday. Only problem is Fed needs a "Lehman" to launch QE — zerohedge (@zerohedge) September 16, 2019

... is another repo market crisis, and/or a plunge in stocks, or maybe both just to tbe sure. And since the "QE4" outcome is precisely the one that Trump also wants, expect fireworks in repo as soon as tonight.

As for Powell's promise to cut rates more should the economy worsen, we expect that Trump already knows the rules of the game, and will announce some major escalation in the trade war with China in the coming days if not hours.