Yellen legacy to date sparkles on jobs but stumbles on inflation

Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen arrives for the G7 Financial ministers meeting in the southern Italian city of Bari, Italy, May 12, 2017. REUTERS/Alessandro Bianchi

WASHINGTON: On the employment side of the Federal Reserve’s twin objectives, chairman Janet Yellen’s (pic) track record so far has been a sparkling success. On the other, there’s a problem with a stubborn, uncooperative indicator: inflation.

The Fed’s preferred price measure has averaged 1.1% since Yellen took the US central bank’s helm in February 2014 – a significant miss of the Fed’s 2% inflation target. It averaged 2.5% during Alan Greenspan’s chairmanship between 1987 and 2006, and 1.9% during eight years under Ben Bernanke.