Thank you, Barbara, and thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today. My subject, as it often is, is the outlook for the U.S. economy, and how that affects the Federal Open Market Committee's (FOMC) continuing effort to reduce inflation to a sustained level of 2 percent while maintaining a healthy labor market. We made a lot of headway toward our inflation goal in 2023, and the labor market moved substantially into better balance, all while holding the unemployment rate below 4 percent for nearly two years. But the data we have received so far this year has made me uncertain about the speed of continued ... (full story)