Federal Reserve policymakers may finally be right on the verge of cutting interest rates. Going into this week’s two-day policy meeting, which wraps Wednesday afternoon in Washington, investors are assigning roughly even odds to the prospect that the US central bank will start lowering borrowing costs at its next decision in March. That makes Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s press conference, and any signal he may or may not choose to send, of critical importance. It all comes down to how Powell and his colleagues have been reading the recent spate of economic data. On one hand, inflation numbers continue to surprise to the ... (full story)