There are other reasons for the supply-chain problems and rising inflation. Covid precautions and pandemic disruptions at factories, warehouses and ports are also playing a role. “The world is nowhere near being fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, and that means factories in, say, Vietnam are still having trouble keeping up with demand as workers keep getting sick,” The Washington Post’s Amber Phillips wrote.

But the cash glut is the primary reason for increasing demand. “There is a sudden and massive surge of demand that far outweighs the market’s capacity,” Craig Fuller, the chief executive of FreightWaves, a publication that covers logistics, wrote recently.

If anything, some observers have made the situation seem more complicated than it is, suggesting that the economy is suffering from a mysterious ailment, like 1970s-style “stagflation” (a mix of stagnation and inflation). “The use of ‘stagflation’ is wrong,” Olivier Blanchard, a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, wrote last week. “We are not seeing anything like stagnation. What we are seeing instead is very strong growth, fueled by private and public demand, hitting supply constraints, and leading to some sharp price increases.”