The Federal Reserve's favored inflation measure remained low last month, bolstering evidence that price pressures are steadily cooling and setting the stage for the Fed to begin cutting interest rates this fall. Prices rose just 0.1% from May to June, the Commerce Department said Friday, up from the previous month's unchanged reading. Compared with a year earlier, inflation declined to 2.5% from 2.6%, per the AP. Excluding volatile food and energy prices, so-called core inflation rose 0.2% from May to June, up from the previous month's 0.1%. Measured from one year earlier, core prices increased 2.6%, unchanged from June. Taken as a whole, Friday's figures suggest that the worst streak of inflation in four decades, which peaked two years ago, is nearing an end.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell has said that this summer's cooling price data has strengthened his confidence that inflation is returning sustainably to the central bank's target level of 2%. Lower interest rates and weaker inflation, along with a still-solid job market, could also brighten Americans' assessment of the economy and influence this year's presidential race, likely between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Trump. Yet with the pace of hiring cooling and the economy growing at a steady, if not robust, pace, it's considered a near-certainty that the Fed will cut its benchmark interest rate when it meets in mid-September. The central bank will first meet next week. But Powell is expected to say afterward that the Fed's policymakers still want to see additional data to be sure that inflation is slowing consistently.
(More
inflation stories.)
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
