ALMOST TEN years into the recovery from the financial crisis, American monetary-policymakers are still finding that inflation is strangely quiescent. Every time price pressures seem to build, they then dissipate. The latest peak was in July 2018. Inflation as measured by the personal consumption expenditure (PCE) index, which the Federal Reserve tries to pin at 2%, was at 2.4%, and, in a rare heated moment-by the standards of the past decade-consumer-price inflation hit 2.9%. But since then, even as unemployment has stayed low, both measures have sagged to below 2% once again.
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