NPR.

Here at the end of KZ, we are still feeling a little rattle.

Yes, we are.

I still have my smelling salts in hand.

You need to get those negative ions balanced, right?

We are still processing this unexpectedly high inflation reading that came in earlier

this month.

And this was followed by the Federal Reserve, the US Central Bank, raising interest rates

by three quarters of a percent.

And today, Fed Chair Jerome Powell testified before the Senate banking committee.

He faced politicians grumpy about rising interest rates and high inflation.

Politicians like Senator John Kennedy.

Inflation is hitting my people so hard, they're coughing up bones.

And this situation isn't where anyone wanted to end up, because even the Fed projects

that more people might now have to be out of work.

That's unfortunately what the Fed raising interest rates does.

It makes the economy worse now, with the hope that inflation will come down and the economy

will be in a better place later.

Inflation was taking up quite a lot last year, and even though it's the Fed's job to keep

prices stable, still the Fed kept interest rates really low.

It only started raising them recently.

And so one question we want to get to the bottom of is, how did the Fed allow this to happen?

...