The U.S. economy is confusing everyone

The full story only barely holds together. In the Fed’s view, inflation is partially caused by the labor market, but also not caused by the labor market; it’s largely a supply-side issue that the Fed can’t fix, but the Fed is going to try desperately to fix it anyway; and we’re hopefully not getting a recession, but we’re probably getting a recession. Like I said: baffling.

What the Fed is actually trying to do here—as opposed to the story it’s telling about what’s happening in the economy—is clear, yet extremely difficult: It is trying to destroy demand just enough to reduce excess inflation but not so much that the economy crashes. This a little bit like trying to tranquilize a raging grizzly bear with experimental drugs: Maybe you bring down its core temperature but also maybe you leave the big guy in a coma. The Fed could succeed. It could get Americans to spend a little less, borrow a little less, and loan a little less, and this synchronized decrescendo in economic activity would almost certainly reduce inflation. But here’s the problem: If global energy prices don’t come down and global supply chains remain tangled by Omicron variants and other natural disasters, we might end up with the worst of both worlds: destroyed domestic demand and constricted global supply. Slow growth and high energy prices could mean the return of the dreaded stagflation.