Commentary
NEW YORK—The biggest economic news of the year, so far, has been inflation—the highest in 40 years—and the Federal Reserve’s (Fed’s) efforts to fight it. And while there have been lots of finger-pointing at causes—from President Joe Biden’s fossil fuel policies to the war in Ukraine—all of which are at least somewhat true—there are myriad other causes that the media tends to ignore and that we need to address to tamp down the current inflation and avoid it in the future.
Even Fed Chair Jerome Powell dismissed Biden’s claims of “Putin’s Price Hike,” pointing out that inflation was well underway before Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. But that war is an element of the current inflation, albeit because of the West’s sanctions on Russia, particularly on the costs of oil and natural gas prices and the staggeringly high cost of fertilizer, much of which comes from Russia….