Unlike some central banks, our Federal Reserve faces two mantes: “to keep prices stable, and to make sure the nation runs at maximum employment.”

That’s the way Becky Quick describes the situation in the latest Fortune. (Once again, it’s a column not yet posted online.)

You’ll have to wait to read all of Quick’s concerns about the Fed attempting to “serve two masters,” but I will cite a couple of paragraphs here:

Our plan sounds better, in theory. After all, who doesn’t want to live in a society where everyone has a job and where the prices your pay for things like food, gas, and medicine never go up? But the actions required to meet those two mandates can be contradictory, and some observers worry we are nearing one of those inflection points today. Their big concern is that by choosing to focus on the still unacceptably high unemployment level in America, the Fed will lose sight of the mandate to fight inflation — with disastrous results.

“The whole thing can backfire,” says John Taylor, an economics professor at Stanford University and an expert on monetary policy. “Inflation starts to run up, you have to stomp on the brakes, then unemployment rises.”