The FOMC meeting is out of the way and the quiet period for Fed speakers that preceded it has ended. We are now getting a barrage of “how we got it wrong” inflation retrospectives and “how we can get it right” policy tightening perspectives from Federal Reserve Presidents and Governors. A proper understanding of both of these helps explain the path we’ve traveled and what might lay ahead. While labor supply crunches and supply chain disruptions have played their part, the Fed seems to have forgotten Milton Friedman’s famous quote: “Inflation is always & everywhere a monetary phenomenon in the sense that it is and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output.” Money supply rose 25% in 2020 and another 13% in 2021. The Fed’s balance sheet expanded by 78% in 2020 and another 18% in 2021. Inflation soared and has proven not to be transitory in large part because these liquidity increases have persisted. If the Fed is going to get ahead of inflation, it will have to stop blaming exogenous factors and focus on the instruments over which it has some control. And Financial assets will have to adjust to a new reality of less liquidity sloshing through the sluices.
