What a week it might have been? Speeches and interviews have made it fairly clear that Federal Reserve officials were building a case to begin normalizing interest rate policy as soon as this month, but they are increasingly wary that a misstep could derail the economy at a time when they perceive a lack of tools to address renewed weakness. From the policy discussion of the June Federal Open Market Committee meeting: Another concern related to the risk of premature policy tightening was the limited ability of monetary policy to offset downside shocks to inflation and economic activity when the federal funds rate was ... (full story)