Secular Inflation & the End of the Great Moderation | Nick Timiraos

In Episode 271 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Nick Timiraos, the chief economics correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, where he covers the Federal Reserve and U.S. economic policy. Timiraos is also the author of Trillion Dollar Triage, a detailed account of the day-by-day and sometimes hour-by-hour policymaking by Federal Reserve officials during the heights of the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequently between 2020-2021. The first part of this conversation focuses on the immediate concerns that investors have about Fed policy and the path of interest rates. This includes a discussion about inflation targeting and inflation expectations, personnel and the centralization of policymaking at the Fed, and tradeoffs between economic growth, financial stability, and inflation. In the second hour, Demetri and Nick discuss quantitative tightening, balance sheet capacity, and how this Fed would react to inadvertently "breaking something" in the plumbing of the financial system. They also discuss fiscal and monetary collaboration, the ability or inability to get inflation under control long-term without stabilizing government debt, the Fed put, the stock market, and much, mu…