The Federal Reserve on Wednesday will launch one of the most difficult tasks a central bank can attempt: Raise borrowing costs enough to slow growth and tame high inflation, but not so much as to topple the economy into recession. With a war raging in Europe and price increases at a four-decade high, Fed Chair Jerome Powell will seek to engineer a “soft landing”: A gradual slowdown in economic activity that helps curb surging prices, while keeping the job market and economy expanding. “You’ve got to be both lucky and good” to avoid causing a downturn, said Alan Blinder, a Princeton University economist who served as vice chair of the Fed from 1994 to 1996, when the central bank was widely seen as achieving a soft landing.
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Federal Reserve to begin risky pursuit of a ‘soft landing’
