I think these ideas might be a way to make some sense of the current economy: * Lots of people died of covid and many more are being disabled by long covid (on

I think these ideas might be a way to make some sense of the current economy: * Lots of people died of covid and many more are being disabled by long covid (on an ongoing basis), plus covid takes people out of the work force longer than a cold or flu, so there is a labor shortage. The Fed is pushing on a wet noodle trying to kill the labor market and is instead destroying business and markets, so business is scared of a recession, but they can't stop the Fed continuing to push the wet noodle in a vain attempt to reduce wages and cut jobs. * Many people are still scared of covid and stocking up (the next wave is coming, look at the hospitalization trend in CA). The war in Ukraine is also making things uncertain, so stock up more. People are doing crazy things (taking out power to towns, going on shooting rampages, saying insane things) so stock up more. People are afraid so they are also buying themselves nice things as therapy. * Many businesses over-ordered when supply chains were disfunctional. Now the supply chains are clearing, but business has too much stuff. So they have stopped ordering, which helps the supply chains recover, but the businesses on the other end see a drop in demand because business already has enough goods. So business is "not normal" and they are scared. * Bad behavior by businesses in raising prices, workers being laid off because "a recession is coming" in an effort to intimidate workers, thereby creating inflation and a recession out of thin air. There are other things going on also, such as likely declines in steel production in Germany due to lack of natural gas, a probable production slump in Europe due to the effects of the war on energy there, China shutting down causing new supply chain problems. What the author of the article really seems to be saying is not that the economy is not predictable, it just doesn't fit the old models which were based on everything being balanced (just-in-time manufacturing, supply chains, financial flows) so the models are no longer predictive and they don't know how to fix them to deal with a disturbed system. Some of the clues to what is going on are inconvenient to acknowledge also (past bad behavior is now affecting worker choices) so some of it is just ignored. What is going on is very obvious, the big wheels just think it looks crazy though because they are not in control of it any more and their simplistic models, fine tuned over a much more stable time period, have become useless. The Fed is the prime example, all they can do is change rates and do QE or QT, but those tools do not affect the causes of current inflation or relieve worker shortages. But it is all they can do, so they do it, and they feel blind because their simplistic stop/go lever is not working as it used to. Congress is impotent and won't help. Take all these facts and build a new model, one tailored for understanding disasters.