Internationalism No. 80, October 2025 Page 8 In the 1970s, the US Congress gave the Federal Reserve a dual mandate: to ensure price stability and promote maximum employment through interest rates. When a prevailing trend is clear, the Fed's course of action is simple: if inflation visibly rises, it must raise rates and increase the cost of money; if the economy is limping and the labour market is faltering, it must open the credit taps and reduce rates. That is the theory, but in practice there is political struggle, the interpretation of data, short- and long-term forecasts, and divergent interests among bourgeois fractions. Economic data is often contradictory, and this is what is happening in America today, with an added complication: an open struggle between the executive and the central bank for control of monetary policy. Between inflation and employment Fed Chairman Jerome Powell summed up the situation: The unemployment rate is...