Is It Worth Going Back to a Made-Up Number?

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Allison Shrager: When inflation is 2%, no one worries about it very much. She says if the inflation target is slightly higher, the nominal interest rates can be slightly higher during the good times. Rich Houston: Even Whitney Houston's voice hit a deeply private pain with her song "Wondery"

If the Fed had a mantra to go along with its mandate, it might well be "two percent." We look into how that became the target inflation rate, why some economists are calling for a change and how the inflation rate becomes unanchored.

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