Jerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, appeared before the Senate Banking Committee on Wednesday.Credit…Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesJerome H. Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, said that the central bank might be able to lower rapid inflation without tipping America into a painful downturn, though he cautioned that pulling it off would be “very challenging” to achieve and that a recession is “certainly a possibility.”“We’re not trying to provoke, and don’t think that we will need to provoke, a recession,” Mr. Powell said while testifying before the Senate Banking Committee on Wednesday. “But we do think it’s absolutely essential that we restore price stability, really for the benefit of the labor market, as much as anything else.”Mr. Powell, who will return to Capitol Hill to testify again on Thursday, is facing a challenging moment. Inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index is running at 8.6 percent, the fastest pace in more than four decades, having re-accelerated in May thanks to surging gas prices and airfares. Although the economy remains strong and unemployment is historically low at 3.6 percent, the fast price increases have prompted the Fed to adjust its policy at an incr …
