Federal Reserve officials have spent the past two months getting investors acclimatized to their plans to slow economic growth and combat inflation by raising interest rates in half-percentage-point increments until price pressures cool.
This coming week’s policy meeting will show whether officials are still comfortable with that approach in light of reports Friday that inflation sizzled in May, hitting a new 40-year high, and that consumers’ longer-term inflation expectations rose to a new 14-year high. The survey measure is important to central bankers because they believe such expectations can be self-fulfilling.
