Weighing its projections for growth and inflation, as well as the risks to those projections, the FOMC on October 31 reduced its target for the federal funds rate an additional 25 basis points, to 4-1/2 percent.
It often takes many years of data to  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  establish any degree of confidence in asserting a change in a trend. As a result, it should come as no surprise that I do not have an answer for the question whether we are facing a new normal.