经济周刊：又一次暂时的价格冲击

William Blair The conclusion they drew from the GFC, for example, wasto provide as much stimulus as possible, as early as pos-sible, and not worry about the consequences. The resultwas that when the pandemic rolled around, policymak-ers did exactly that and generated rates of inflation notseen since the 1980s. Having now learned the lessonsfrom that experience, and assuming they follow the samepattern in the face of today’s oil shock, we should expect surefire recipe for inflation, resulting in a prescriptionof leaning against it with more restrictive policy. In thisframework, it does not see supply-side shocks as persis-tent drivers of inflation unless they destabilize inflation-ary expectations enough to unleash a wage-price spiral. Supply-side shocks are viewed as relative price shocks—if consumers pay more at the pump for gasoline, they willlikely spend less for trips to the cinema or dinners out.Furthermore, given the U.S.’s geography, access to naturalresources, abundance of labor, trading agreements, and Central bankers, meanwhile, are also likely to respondto the inflation threat much quicker and more vigor-ously than they did following the pandemic, havingdiscovered just how much the public really hates infla-tion (and who inevitably gets the blame).As we headtoward yet another unfolding inflation shock, in thisEconomics Weeklywe discuss how central banks view The Bank of England, meanwhile, also looks at policythrough a similar Phillips curve and neo-Keynesian lens,but out of necessity it places more weight than the Fed on The ECB also takes a similar wage-price dynamic view,but tends to put a little more relative weight on theWicksellian natural rate—where it needs to guard againstholding its main policy rate below the natural interest inflation, what their likely response will be todaylooking through that prism, and why they also shouldacknowledge that inflation was already acceleratingeven before the start of the war. Additional alternative views, such as those from theeconomistJohn Cochrane, espouse the Fiscal Theory ofthe Price Level. These approaches agree that the currentoil supply shock should be viewed as nothing but a rela-tive price change, but one key area of difference is thatthey apply no weight at all to expectations. For them, oilprice increases are like a wave that rises and falls. Infla- Although some had always suspected it, one of the unfor-tunate revelations following COVID was that economists and central bankers know a lot less about inflation andwhat drives it than they thought they did. Not havinghad any serious bouts of inflation since the 1980s meantthat there was a certain amount of complacency (ormisplaced confidence) around the ability to both predictit and control it. Neel Kashkari of the Minneapolis Fedonce summed up the Fed’s view before the pandemic as: For Cochrane, an oil supply shock is only inflationaryif it is accommodated by fiscal or monetary support tosocialize the cost of the shock. This is what happenedduring the pandemic when the Fed was slow to raiseinterest rates and even slower to end QE, while simulta-neously the government was providing trillions of dollarsin stimulus. Hence, with this view, the key during the So how does the Fed think about inflation? It explicitlyrejects the monetarist and fiscal dominance approachesas explanatory drivers, and effectively follows some-thing like an expectations or neo-Keynesian approach.This means it views inflation as largely a combination of at year-end). Pricing around what the Fed is expected todo has shifted from removing any expected future ratecuts to tentatively starting to price in a 25-basis-pointrise. Investors are expecting those ECB and BoE rates tothen start to be cut in 2027, but still not return to pre-warlevels. The Fed is expected to get back on track to previ- last crisis, but others … not so much. for what their responses should be. In Spain, for ex-ample, where Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has beena firm critic of the war and also faces an election nextyear, the response has been by far the most aggressive.The government has immediately introduced a €5 bil-lion spending package that features 80 different policymeasures, including a reduction in the standard 21% VATon gasoline, electricity, and natural gas to just 10%. As we In the U.K., where the government gilt market has beenmuch less cooperative than in the U.S., the chancellor ismulling a more discrete package of targeted measures forthose families most adversely impacted, which may be an-nounced in the King’s Speech on May 13. In addition, a re-newed cap on energy prices will be announced next weekbased on pre-war prices. In France, the only response has Interestingly, many Asian countries, which are first in linewhen it comes to the direct impact from the energy priceincreases, have chosen to use more demand-suppressingmeasures. These countries are reducing workweeks, insti- Financial Markets Are Pricing In Strong Mone