Jon Hilsenrath: Tame Inflation to Keep Fed on Course
Jon Hilsenrath:
Tame Inflation to Keep Fed on Course - WSJ.com: Federal Reserve officials are likely to continue their easy-money policies at the central bank's policy meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday, in part because several recent inflation measures have fallen well below the Fed's 2% target.
With inflation now lower than the Fed wants, officials are likely to conclude their policies show no sign of overheating the economy. That allows them to maintain their $85 billion-a-month bond-buying program, which the central bank is employing to ease credit conditions and spur spending, investment and hiring.
Fed officials after their March policy meeting talked about tapering off the bond purchases later this year if the economy continued to gain strength. But inflation readings have since slipped, and employment numbers have been disappointing.
The Commerce Department reported Friday that its personal consumption expenditure price index—one of the Fed's favored measures of consumer price inflation—was up 1.2% in the first quarter from a year earlier, well below the central bank's target. It was the weakest annual reading since the third quarter of 2008, when the U.S. was consumed by the financial crisis.
