Burns asked why inflation was ‘proving so stubborn’, and why central bankers were failing to stop it. He offered a remarkable confession: that the Fed could have stopped this inflation at any time, but didn’t because it lacked the will to do so.
1 To quote from the speech directly: 1 This text paraphrases the following: “Viewed in the abstract, the Federal Reserve System had the  power to abort the inflation at its incipient stage fifteen years ago or at any later point, and it has the power to end it today.