Almost 40 years after Paul Volcker brought the U.S. economy to its knees to bring inflation down, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and his colleagues are on a mission to stoke price pressures and avoid a Japan-like deflationary trap.Declaring that too-low inflation was “one of the major challenges of our time,’’ Powell left open the possibility on Wednesday that the Fed’s next interest-rate move might be a cut after four increases last year.
