Fed’s Powell faces ‘what, me worry?’ moment of spiking bond yields, war, political stalemate

Federal Reserve officials may not raise interest rates when they meet in two weeks but neither will they say their 19-month drive to hike borrowing costs is over, a difficult messaging challenge U.S. central bank chief Jerome Powell will take on this week. * And underlying inflation appears to be cooling, but a jump in housing and services prices in September threatened, as one analyst said, to spoil the Fed's "narrative" that price pressures would continue to wane. With fodder to bolster either side of the policy debate, Powell must make sense of it all without triggering either unwarranted confidence that financial conditions are tight enough to lower inflation to the Fed's 2% target, although that may be true, or unwarranted fear the central bank will need to crack down with higher interest rates, which could also be true.