On a Roll at Jackson Hole, Fed Can’t Celebrate Yet: MLIV Pulse

If they’d been offered today’s economy a year ago – with inflation downgraded from emergency to mere headache, still-low unemployment, and growth that’s slowed without stalling – the world’s top central bankers would’ve taken it like a shot.

That doesn’t mean anyone at Jackson Hole, where Federal Reserve chief Jerome Powell and his peers meet this week, is likely to declare mission accomplished.

One example of the fragile backdrop to this year’s gathering: Even in the US, which has the rosiest numbers among major economies, two-thirds of 602 respondents in Bloomberg’s latest Markets Live Pulse survey say the Fed has ...