Federal Reserve Has Been Panicked by Inflation

The just released minutes from the Federal Open Market Committee’s March meeting, and speeches April 5 by the Fed’s nominated vice-chair, Lael Brainard, and San Francisco Fed President Mary Daley, make clear that NATO’s firing of deadly hyperinflation missiles and ongoing destruction of economies has panicked the Bank. It will now apparently try to “rein in inflation aggressively” with a succession of half-point interest rate increases, according to Daly, who joined the Atlanta and St. Louis presidents already publicly demanding this. And it will, according to Brainard, likely start “tapering QE” by $60-90 billion per month. (Brainard and Daly are both profiled as “doves” who favor easy money.) The Fed will thus do its part in bringing the U.S. economy into recession quickly. But this policy shift is still not likely to head off the inflation wave which the central bank triggered and has allowed to rise for 18 consecutive months.