Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell won praise for his deft leadership during the maelstrom of the pandemic recession. As threats to the U.S. economy have mounted, though, Powell has increasingly struck Fed watchers as much less sure-footed.
Inflation has proved higher and far more persistent than he or the Fed's staff economists had foreseen. And at a policy meeting last week, Powell announced an unusual last-minute switch to a bigger interest rate hike than he had previously signaled — and then followed with a news conference that many economists described as muddled and inconsistent.
