By Peter Ireland
As expected, the Federal Reserve reversed course last week, lowering interest rates by one-quarter percentage point and thereby undoing the last in a series of nine rate hikes that began in December 2015. My previous essay for E21 described how this policy turnaround can be justified by the Federal Open Market Committee's latest forecasts, which project slower U.S. inflation and weaker economic growth than expected last fall.
At his press conference immediately following the policy announcement, however, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell described the rationale for the rate cut in a different