Hawkish Fed signals it may have to raise rates sooner to fight inflation

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16. if we do a similar analysis for inflation,

inflation
11/2019-11/2020 was 1.9%
11/2020-11/2021 was 6.8%

similar math puts that at right around 4.0% annual inflation for the 2-year period. which is on the higher side, but not overly alarming in and of itself.

but people aren't overly concerned about a 4% inflation rate, they're concerned about the fact that it's been 6.8% over the last year and has been generally accelerating.

which, notably, has tracked pretty reasonably with the gdp growth. this economy is confusing and complicated and unusual, but it seems clear that it's trying to grow at an even faster clip and we just don't have the infrastructure to do that properly, leading to such things as port congestion trying to handle the massive throughput.

tempering demand just a little bit to ease up on the strain against the infrastructure doesn't seem unreasonable. when the traffic at the ports eases up and other supply chain issues get resolved, that's probably the time to stop raising rates.