In what could be Jerome Powell’s final meeting as Federal Reserve chair, he is expected to lead his fellow policymakers toward another cautious pause, with stubborn inflation and a resilient labor market leaving little room yet for interest rate cuts. The decision Wednesday will come against a backdrop of elevated energy prices and a central bank that has been above its 2% inflation target for five years at the same time that the labor market has been weak but not in distress. That’s not a recipe for easing, at least not yet. “On the dual mandate, they’d say we’re roughly at a stable labor market,” Roger Ferguson, an ... (full story)