“We’re now 18 months into this episode of high inflation, and we don’t have a clearly identified, scientific way of understanding at what point inflation becomes entrenched. The thing we need to do, from a risk-management standpoint, is use our tools forcefully but thoughtfully and get inflation under control.”

Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, underscored during a news conference after the central bank’s two-day meeting that policymakers were dedicated to wrestling price increases lower and were nowhere near stopping their efforts to raise borrowing costs and slow growth. Federal Reserve officials made their fourth supersize interest rate increase in a row on Wednesday as reported by The New York Times in a story titled “Fed Makes Fourth Jumbo Rate Increase and Signals More to Come.”