John Cochrane and Kevin Hassett write at National Review Online about the possible return of the dreaded “I” word. Many people today have little memory of the dangers associated with high inflation.
[T]he vaccinated, post-COVID boom is on the way. Most people have money, and are ready to spend it. Yet unprecedented fiscal and monetary “stimulus” continues.
Is persistent inflation around the corner? Inflation and commodity prices are up sharply. The latest Michigan survey shows people expect 3.7 percent inflation next year. Shortages of everything from lumber to semiconductors have raised input prices for businesses, while the percentage of small businesses reporting that they cannot find qualified workers is at a record high. The ingredients are in the pot, and the fire is on.
But will the pot boil? Since 2008, observers have warned of imminent inflation, yet inflation has barely budged.
Inflation is hard to foresee, because inflation today depends in large part on what people expect of inflation in the future. If businesses expect higher prices and wages next year, they raise prices now. If workers expect higher prices and wages next year, they demand higher wages now.
Inflation has been so low for so long that most Americans understandably see persistent inflation as ancient history, and that any blip up today will quickly be reversed.
Yet faith that our government will take prompt action to reverse inflation seems increasingly unfounded.
The Federal Reserve’s new policy framework and its officials’ speeches are eerily reminiscent of the early 1970s, and repudiate the standard lessons of that experience. One may rightly worry that should inflation emerge, the Fed could repeat mistakes of the 1970s.
The Fed has returned to the view that it can and should strive to eliminate “shortfalls” in economic activity. But in the 1970s we learned that economies can run too hot as well as too cold.