It wasn’t that long ago that the Federal Reserve, the central bank for the United States, was worrying that annual inflation would surpass 9% in the middle of 2022. The U.S. economy hadn’t seen prices rise that fast since the 1980s, and most everyone feared that a series of interest rate hikes would plunge the economy into a recession. What a difference two years can make. Inflation cooled to 2.4% in September 2024, according to consumer price index data released by the Labor Department on Oct. 10.