The opening salvo was the American Rescue Plan, which came in for immense criticism as "the most irresponsible fiscal policy in 50 years". Soaring inflation seemed to vindicate the critics 2/

But now inflation seems to be coming down as fast as it went up. The new Team Transitory warns that this improvement won't last — but it's getting harder to make that case 3/

Here's "supercore" inflation — ex food, energy, shelter (which we know is very lagged) and used cars 4/

And here's average hourly earnings, skipping the period when pandemic compositional effects caused huge distortions 5/

Meanwhile, we seem to have avoided the "scarring" many feared, with the labor market recovering to pre-crisis levels far faster than it did after the financial crisis 6/

Maybe new data will make the picture look worse in a few months. But right now it looks as if we achieved rapid recovery at the cost of maybe 20 months of elevated inflation. 7/

@TCatInReality @pkrugman we don’t have an inflation problem as much as we have an excess corporate profit problem.

@TCatInReality @DanFell
Yyyep- it wasn't like all the sudden us poors were out scooping up all the eggs (there was an avian flu) or driving twice as much or eating more bread (war in Ukraine) or buying three extra cars (chip shortage). Combine all the quirky inflationary causes with oligopical corporate greed (oh hey- they've all managed to squirrel away some pandemic cash, let's claw it back!), and here we are.
@pkrugman