The only Federal Reserve official to dissent from the central bank’s aggressive half-point interest-rate cut earlier this week said she thought it would send the wrong message to markets that inflation was dead.

U.S. inflation slowed to 2.5 percent in the year through August, but beneath the surface the details suggested that the costs of key categories, like housing, were stubborn.

Having all but tamed inflation, the Federal Reserve is poised to do something Wednesday it hasn’t done in more than four years: Cut its benchmark interest rate, a step that should lead to lower borrowing costs for consumers and businesses.