No more fine tuning: Fed is right to stay the course on interest rates

Last week, the Federal Reserve did the right thing by leaving well enough alone, keeping the benchmark interest rate at about 5.4%. With the acute pressure that the board and Chair Jay Powell in particular have faced in the past several months, we’re glad they’ve had the wisdom to know when to step back. There have been those that, wedded to formulaic understandings about the economy, have insisted it’s all but mechanically impossible for inflation to come down into acceptable ranges without seriously harming the economy. We’ve even heard that we need a recession, that a recession is the inevi...