No. of Recommendations: 0
There are a couple of things that impact the ability of the Fed to reduce inflation to 2%.
On the negative side is the fiscal policy of the political branches of our economy: the government keeps spending money like there's no tomorrow. It's tough to take money out of the economy, which is what the Fed is trying to do, when the government keeps injecting money into the economy with such high spending. It's like the modern-day "Keynesians" haven't read Keynes: a) government-originated spending stimulus isn't needed anymore, and b) the spending stimulus creates government debt that Keynes said needed to be paid back promptly, not kept or grown in perpetuity.
On the inflation reduction side is the reinstated requirement that (most) student debt must be repaid by those erstwhile students. That's a large chunk of money that must come out of the economy--reduced spending--in order to make the debt repayments. Of course much of that repaid debt goes back into the economy as other lending, but new/other borrowing is reduced or delayed in the present inflationary environment. The relative impact of those two competing forces is yet to be seen, but even if there's a net increase in borrowing from a net increase in loanable funds from those student debt repayments, that net increase occurs after some lags.
Eric Hines
