US inflation is cooling much quicker than experts are betting in a sign the Federal Reserve’s series of steep rate hikes are quashing price pressures. Prices climbed 8.5 percent in the world’s biggest economy last month, down from a 40-year high 9.1 percent, according to the Labor Department. Wall Street had forecast headline consumer price index inflation to have dipped to 8.7 percent in July. Fed chair Jerome Powell and the rest of the federal open market committee have embarked on the quickest rate hike cycle since the early 1980s…
