Thank you, David Wessel, and thank you to Brookings for the opportunity to speak to you today. In the second half of 2023, I gave a series of speeches about the apparent conflict between the strength of economic activity in the third quarter and continued progress toward the Federal Open Market Committee's (FOMC) 2 percent inflation goal.1 I said then that "something's got to give"—either activity needs to moderate, or progress on lowering inflation is going to stop. By late November, the latest economic data left me encouraged that there were signs of moderating economic activity in the fourth quarter, but inflation ... (full story)