Greg Ip, Chief Economics Commentator for The Wall Street Journal, thinks the Federal Reserve should cut its benchmark interest rates sooner rather than later. After all, he says, inflation is down to 2.6% and the unemployment rate stands at 4.1%.

I disagree. Ip makes much of the rate of inflation drop, from 4.3% then to an estimated 2.6% now, the steepest decline since 1984, and of the unemployment rate increase, to 4.1% from 3.6%, an increase seldom seen outside recessions.

Not so much. The inflation rate drop also is from its 9+% peak a couple years ago, and as Ip put it, the current rate is within shouting distance of the Fed’s goal of 2%. That much Ip has right; the difference now is economic noise. Regarding unemployment, 3.6% is historically consistent with a hot, inflationary labor market while 4.1% is historically consistent with a healthy economy. The rate of increase bears watching, but it doesn’t warrant action.

In fact, nothing in Ip’s article data warrant Fed action. The Fed’s current benchmark interest rates, between 5.25% and 5.5%, are entirely consistent, historically, with 2% inflation and 4-ish% unemployment. Actual economic fluctuations around those targets are normal and self-correcting.

Rather than cutting rates further, or dithering about when to cut—or to increase, an option the Fed also still is mumbling about—Powell and his Governors should stop the hand-wringing, and announce that they’re going to leave the rates alone for the foreseeable future because the economy has arrived. No further movement, in either direction, in the benchmarks is warranted.