If inflation stays too low, people will start to expect it to stay that way, creating a vicious cycle, pushing inflation further down over the longer term, and making it harder to achieve our goals through monetary policy. The Second District All of these numbers tell the story of the U.S. economy at the macro level, but they’re not always reflected in the real experiences of Americans across the country. I referred at the beginning of this speech to the Second District—which includes New York State, parts of New Jersey and Connecticut, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands—and is the area the New York Fed is responsible for. I spent yesterday and today meeting with district business leaders, community organizers, and elected officials, hearing about their work, their successes, and their challenges. People’s experiences are influenced by the macro level, but their local economy plays an equal, and often more important role in shaping their economic opportunity. One aspect of the Fed that we don’t talk about enough is the work our regional economists and our outreach teams do, trying to understand what’s going on at the local level. While the U.S. economy has been growing for the last 10 years, analysis by New York Fed economists shows that not everyone is feeling the benefits equally.
2 Abel, Jaison R. and Richard Deitz, Why Are Some Places So Much More Unequal Than Others?, Federal  Reserve Bank of New York, Economic Policy Review, forthcoming 2019. 3/3  BIS central bankers' speeches