"It was timely and consistent" with the Fed's two mandates of attaining 2% inflation and maximum employment, Jefferson said at Davidson College in North Carolina. The Fed's success in meeting the first mandate by bringing down inflation, he said, allowed the U.S. central bank "to pay increased attention to the other side of the mandate." Jefferson voted in September with the majority of his colleagues to reduce the Fed's policy rate, marking a turning point in what had been a two-year battle against inflation that took U.S. borrowing costs to their highest levels in decades.