> But isn’t the current inflation because they printed money out of thin air for nearly two years to push markets well beyond all times highs? Essentially yes

> But isn’t the current inflation because they printed money out of thin air for nearly two years to push markets well beyond all times highs? Essentially yes (although some amount of that is out of feds scope - see federal stimulus and PPP, decided by the legislative branch). At the beginning of the pandemic inflation was low (the fear was deflation) and unemployment was at extreme highs. > It seems like a lot of rubber banding. You aren’t wrong but the pandemic was a black swan event and society’s response to the pandemic was unprecedented (basically shutting down economic activity, some economic sectors like office real estate fundamentally altered to this day). I don’t think there was an easy way out and, all things considered, my opinion is the federal reserve (and lawmakers) did a pretty good job of keeping our economy from imploding. Let’s put it another way: the federal reserve is a control system, and that control system was pushed to the boundaries. Any good control system is going to get some rubber banding to recover from this scenario. The risk of runaway unemployment/deflation was too great in 2020, the risk of runaway inflation is too great now.