If you were born after 1980, the monetary tightening that the Fed said this week will begin in March will be unlike any you’ve seen.
This is for two reasons, both unsettling for markets. First, when the Fed began raising interest rates in 1994, 1999, 2004, and 2015, inflation was near or below its desired level (now formally enshrined as 2%). The tightening was thus pre-emptive, intended to keep inflation from going up rather than to push it down. That gave the Fed considerable latitude about how fast to raise interest rates and how to respond to new data.
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