Over the decades since World War Two the growth rates, inflation rates, interest rates and business cycles of the world’s major economies grew closer together. In hindsight and in that context, the U.S. Federal Reserve’s efforts to raise interest rates may have been doomed from the start, undone by global trends that now limit any given central bank’s ability to move too far on its own. That is the conclusion of research presented on Friday at the U.S. central bank’s annual conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. This year’s gathering is focused on the challenges to monetary policy a decade after a deep global and U.S. ... (full story)