, Columnist
The Fed Should Consider Lowering Rates
It’s falling short of its goals for both inflation and employment.
Maybe people still need jobs.
Photographer: Daniel Acker/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
Nobody is expecting any major news from this week’s policy-making meeting at the Federal Reserve. That’s unfortunate, because the Fed should be considering more stimulus for a U.S. economy that has long failed to meet its goals for employment and inflation.
In January 2012, the central bank set an explicit inflation target of 2 percent. In the subsequent seven years, its preferred measure of consumer prices — the Commerce Department’s price index for personal consumption expenditures, excluding food and energy — has consistently fallen short of that target: