Monetary policy challenges of the post-pandemic period

Abstract

On November 3, 2021, the Federal Reserve announced that it was ending its quantitative easing program and on December 15 announced that it would double the rate of contraction. For financial market participants and businesses, this decision was a very serious signal for the emergence of expectations of another serious wave of the global economic downturn. At a press conference following the decision to raise the base rate in March this year, Jerome Powell said that the US central bank would do everything to bring annual inflation down to 2%. According to him, the US Federal Reserve is not considering raising the base rate by 75 basis points. However, the opposite has happened: the Federal Reserve has raised the federal funds rate by 75 basis points four times in a row, and so far annual inflation of over 7% has been unable to do anything, let alone bring it down to 2-3%. Analysts are asking questions: how strong is the US economy, can it withstand the anti-inflationary drug called "monetary tightening"? According to most economists, tightening monetary policy is very likely to trigger another global recession.