2. The Fed has two big jobs, and is failing at one of them
Illustration: Gabriella Turrisi/Axios
The Federal Reserve has been assigned a task by Congress that is easy to describe, yet fiendishly difficult to achieve. It's known as the dual mandate: to achieve both price stability and maximum employment.
During the high unemployment and low inflation of the 2010s, both parts of that dual mandate pointed in the same direction. Not anymore.