Yellen’s First Challenge: Coping With Too-Low Inflation

One of Janet Yellen’s first challenges as Federal Reserve chairman is generating enough inflation to meet the central bank’s target of 2 percent.

Policy makers have failed to attain their goal for almost two years and now are paring the pace of their bond buying. Inflation rose at a 0.9 percent rate for the 12 months ending in November, according to the central bank’s preferred measure. The last time prices were climbing at or above 2 percent was in April 2012.