In late summer 2024, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell walked out to the podium at the central bank's summer conference in Jackson Hole, Wyo., and said the U.S. central bank was winning the fight against inflation. After battling the highest inflation rate in a generation starting in 2021, the "time has come" for interest-rate cuts as there was "good reason to think the economy will get back to 2% inflation while maintaining a strong labor market," Powell said. Only two years earlier, Powell had pledged to do what was needed to bring inflation, then running at a 6.6% rate, back down to the Fed's target of 2%, even ... (full story)