I can’t see a way out of the Fed’s inflation problem. The fiscal side of the house needs to inflate its way out of its debt burden. Thus, the Fed will be required to continue to print money both to purchase new Treasury issuances and to control the yield curve. These Fed actions will of course maintain artificially low interest rates and control fiscal debt service expense while simultaneously adding to the outstanding public debt principal. It is difficult to imagine a scenario where inflated tax revenues outpace the growth rate of public debt. Taking the governor completely off of the printing press would likely lead to a crack-up boom (we do not want to live through that scenario). If the Fed were to allow rates to rise to a market equilibrium level, the economy would fall into a depression. Therefore, a middle ground is likely where the Fed periodically “pumps the brakes” on interest rates while working to maintain a CPI target well north of 2%. The unfortunate thing is that the Fed is unable to control inflation anymore than a Tesla passenger is able to control the vehicle from the rear seat. The middle ground scenario will not work. The Fed will misfire and knock the U.S. economy into a depression (long-term healthy) or more likely accelerate inflation (in which case physical gold and/or mining stocks are looking more attractive by the day).
