For the Fed, a Red Card From the Seventies
Jay Powell may find, as Arthur Burns did, that tackling inflation is not a beautiful game.
Whip it good.
Photographer: Bettmann via Getty Images
Monetary policy is more like the World Cup than it is like mathematics or great literature. As we have seen repeatedly in Qatar this year, the difference between victory and defeat can be a matter of very fine judgments and sheer luck. And when a manager changes his team’s tactics, it can operate with immediate effect — or with a mystifying lag.
Brazil ought to have beaten Croatia in the quarterfinals, but Brazil’s defenders lost concentration in extra time and Bruno Petkovic equalized, opening the way to a penalty shoot-out, his team’s specialty. Yet in the semifinals, Argentina, inspired by their talismanic maestro Lionel Messi, swept the same Croats aside 3-0.