WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell all but proclaimed victory in the fight against inflation and signaled that interest rate cuts are coming in a much-anticipated speech Friday in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

Under Powell, the Fed raised its benchmark rate to the highest level in 23 years to subdue inflation that two years ago was running at the hottest pace in more than four decades. Inflation has come down steadily, and investors now expect the Fed to start cutting rates at its next meeting in September — an expectation that essentially got Powell’s endorsement Friday.

Declaring Victory

“My confidence has grown that inflation is on a sustainable path back to 2%,” Powell said in his keynote speech at the Fed’s annual economic conference in Jackson Hole.

He noted that inflation, according to the Fed’s preferred gauge, had fallen to 2.5% last from a peak of 7.1% two years ago. Measured by the better known consumer price index, inflation has dropped from a peak 9.1% in mid-2022 to 2.9% last month. Both are edging closer to the Fed’s 2% target.

Powell sounded confident that the Fed would achieve a so-called soft landing — containing inflation without causing a recession. “There is good reason to think that the economy will get back to 2% inflation while maintaining a strong labor market,’’ he said.

Higher rates contributed to progress against inflation, as did the easing of supply chain bottlenecks and worker shortages that caused shipping delays and higher prices as the economy bounded back with unexpected strength from COVID-19 lockdowns.

Signaling Rate Cuts

Powell suggested Friday that rate cuts are all but inevitable. “The direction of travel is clear, and the timing and pace of rate cuts will depend on incoming data, the evolving outlook, and the balance of risks,” he said.

Last year, the Fed had predicted that it would trim rates three times this year. But the cuts kept getting pushed back as the progress against inflation faltered early in 2024. Since then, the steady drop in inflation has resumed, giving the Fed more confidence that victory was in sight.

Abandoning the Good Ship “Transitory’’

Powell acknowledged that he and his Fed colleagues misjudged the inflationary threat when it emerged in early 2021. At the time, they expected the flareup of higher prices to be short-lived — the temporary consequence of pandemic-related supply chain disruptions. The pressure, they thought, would fade “fairly quickly without the need for a monetary policy response — in short, that the inflation would be transitory.’’

They weren’t alone in their optimism. “The good ship Transitory was a crowded one,’’ Powell said, ”with most mainstream analysts and advanced-economy central bankers on board.’’

But the word “transitory″ came back to haunt the Fed as inflation proved more intractable than expected. It spread from goods that were subject to supply chain backlogs into services, where it is harder to dislodge without raising rates and risking severe economic pain in the form of layoffs and higher unemployment. The Fed proceeded to raise rates 11 times in 2022 and 2023.

A Little Humility

Powell admitted that policymakers and economists have struggled to understand and respond to an economy that has been unpredictable since COVID-19 hit in early 2020. First, the pandemic shut down commerce and companies collectively slashed millions of jobs. Then the economy roared back with unexpected vigor, setting off inflationary pressures that been dormant since the early 1980s. When the Fed belated responded with aggressive rate hikes, economists predicted the hiring borrowing costs would cause a painful recession. But it didn’t.

“The limits of our knowledge — so clearly evident during the pandemic — demand humility and a questioning spirit focused on learnings lessons form the past and applying them flexibly to our current challenges,’’ Powell said.

A 22-year-old college student in Denmark uncovered an ancient find that turned out to be much larger than originally thought. 

This past spring, Gustav Bruunsgaard, an archaeology student from Aarhus University, took his metal detector to a field near Elsted, where previous excavations had uncovered objects dating back to the Viking Age.

While Bruunsgaard was scouring the land, his metal detector went off. He began to dig in the detected area and found a silver arm ring, according to a translated press release published by the Moesgaard Museum. 

ANCIENT TREASURE DATING BACK THOUSANDS OF YEARS UNEARTHED IN BURIAL MOUND

The ancient silver arm ring turned out to be just the start of more findings. Upon returning to the location a few days later, Bruunsgaard found six more pieces of ancient jewelry. 

Since then, Danish and international experts have further investigated the jewelry, which they have dated back to the early days of the Viking Age, around 800 A.D., according to the museum. 

The seven silver pieces found by Bruunsgaard totaled more than half a kilogram in total weight and are thought to have been used as a form of payment during the Viking Age, having been traded for other goods. 

The jewelry found has been dated back to the Viking Age.  (Moesgaard/Poul Madsen Moesgaard)

RESEARCHERS UNEARTH FIND DATING BACK 2,400 YEARS IN ANCIENT GREEK CITY 

Kasper H. Andersen, PhD and historian at Moesgaard Museum, called the discovery “a fantastically interesting find from the Viking Age, which connects Aarhus with Russia and Ukraine in the east and the British islands in the west,” per the press release. “In this way, the find emphasizes how Aarhus was a central hub in the world of the Vikings, which went all the way from the North Atlantic to Asia.”

The Viking Age was a period full of traveling by sea, according to the National Museum of Denmark’s website. During that time, the Vikings left Scandinavia, and engaged in raids, trade and conquering land. 

Of the silver pieces recently discovered dating back to this time, three of the band-shaped, heavily stamped rings in particular inspired a very similar design created in Ireland, where the style became popular, the Moesgaard Museum noted in their release. 

The silver jewelry found is thought to have been used as a form of payment used for trading thousands of years ago.  (Moesgaard Museum/Poul Madsen Moesgaard Museum)

One of the rings, which takes the shape of a coil or compacted spring, maintains a similar style to those originally from Russia or Ukraine, according to the museum, whereas the three bangles with a very smooth, simple design are known to have originated in Scandinavia and England. 

Currently, the silver treasure is on display at the Moesgaard Museum and will later be transferred to the National Museum of Denmark. 

National security adviser to be in Beijing from Tuesday to Thursday, seeking to improve ties between the US and China.

The White House has announced that National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan will travel to China to meet Foreign Minister Wang Yi, in a new bid to manage tensions months before the United States elections.

Sullivan will visit Beijing from August 27 to 29, marking the first visit by a US national security adviser since 2016. Nonetheless, other senior US officials, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, have visited over the past two years.

A senior US official told reporters on Friday that the trip did not indicate any softening of President Joe Biden’s approach to China and that his administration would continue to believe that “this is an intensely competitive relationship”.

“We are committed to making the investments, strengthening our alliances and taking the common step on tech and national security that we need to take,” the official noted, referring to sweeping restrictions on US technology transfers to China imposed under Biden.

“We are committed to managing this competition responsibly, however, and preventing it from veering into conflict.”

China-US relations have been turbulent in recent years. The two countries have sparred over their economic ambitions, and incidents like the US downing of a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon last year further inflamed tensions.

The visit of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan in 2022, for instance, prompted a rebuke from Beijing, which considered her travel to be an endorsement of the island’s claims to sovereignty.

In April, Chinese President Xi Jinping told Secretary of State Blinken that the two superpowers “should be partners rather than rivals” and should help each other succeed rather than hurt each other, according to the Chinese state news agency Xinhua.

Blinken raised the issue of Chinese “support to the Russian defence industrial base”, and both the leaders agreed that Washington and Beijing still had issues to solve.

On Friday, the US official told reporters that Sullivan will reiterate concerns about China’s support for Russia, as the latter conducts a major expansion of its defence industry amid its invasion of Ukraine. Beijing has repeatedly said it does not directly give weapons to either side.

Moreover, Sullivan will also speak to Wang about North Korea and the Middle East, where China has criticised US support for Israel and Washington has urged China to rein in Iran.

Sullivan’s visit comes within months of the US’s general election in November, in which Vice President Kamala Harris is running to succeed Biden, the outgoing president.

If she wins, Harris is expected to continue to seek dialogue with China while also maintaining pressure. She addressed China briefly on Thursday in a speech accepting the Democratic Party’s nomination for the presidency.

“I will make sure that we lead the world into the future on space and artificial intelligence — that America, not China, wins the competition for the 21st century and that we strengthen, not abdicate, our global leadership,” she told the Democratic National Convention.

Meanwhile, her Republican rival Donald Trump at least rhetorically has pledged to pursue a harder line with China, with some of his aides seeing a far-reaching global showdown ahead.