GRAND TETON NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. — In the decade since the financial crisis, economic policy makers, professors and protesters have gathered here every August to argue about the best ways to return to faster economic growth.

This year, they gave up.

The formal agenda and corridor conversations at the annual conference hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City instead focused mostly on making sure things don’t get worse.

Financial regulators warned against deregulation. Proponents of free trade warned against protectionism. Jerome H. Powell, a Fed governor, warned against the almost unthinkable possibility that the United States might fail to pay its debts.

Monetary policy lost its usual place in the spotlight. The annual conference is an international affair, attracting central bankers from around the world, and it usually focuses on that line of work. But there is a sense among central bankers that they are doing what they can, and that growth remains slow because of structural problems that require other kinds of policy interventions.