The Federal Reserve is walking a tightrope, and Jerome Powell knows it. On Tuesday, the central bank chair reminded markets that there is "no risk-free monetary policy path." It was a line both obvious and unsettling, the kind of remark that lands heavily in an economy already straining under the tension between stubborn inflation and a softening labor market. Investors, conditioned to treat even the faintest Fed signal as prophecy, did not take long to react.
