The Consumer Price Index (CPI) has been increasing at close to a 5 percent annual rate. The Federal Reserve just announced its plans to begin tapering its bond purchases—essentially scaling back an economic stimulus—later this month, but the market is not expecting it to aggressively fight inflation by raising interest rates until the middle of next year. Politics
For months, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell responded to surging inflation by counseling patience and stressing that the Fed wanted to see unemployment return to near-pre-pandemic levels before it would raise interest rates. But on Wednesday, Powell suggested that his patience has run out. High inflation has not only persisted but accelerated to a nearly
If you find the current economy a bit confusing, don’t worry: So does the nation’s top economic official, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. At a highly anticipated news conference Wednesday, Powell said the Fed was sticking by its bedrock economic forecast: COVID-19 will eventually fade, which, in turn, will enable supply chain bottlenecks to unsnarl.
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