Powell Heads to The Mountains

By the time Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell climbs the stage at Jackson Hole this Friday, the familiar choreography will be missing one element: consensus. The minutes of the Fed’s July meeting, released Wednesday, don’t read like the playbook of a central bank serenely steering the economy toward a soft landing. They read like a transcript of an argument.

“Almost all” participants favored holding the federal funds rate at 4.25 to 4.50 percent. “Almost all” does not mean all. Two dissented— Governors Michelle Bowman and Christopher Waller —and their fingerprints are evident throughout the minutes. Where most colleagues worried about upside inflation risk, they saw something different: strip out tariff effects and inflation is close to target alre

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