Time to declare victory on stimulating the economy

Sure, don't "panic" about inflation, but the Fed should react

It makes me very nervous to see headlines like “Why it’s not quite time to panic about inflation” (Emily Stewart, Vox) or “History says don’t panic about inflation” (Paul Krugman, New York Times).

The reason isn’t that you should panic about inflation, but based on the way the English language works, panicking is — by definition — never appropriate. Thus even in retrospect, the really bad takes from January and February 2020 about how we shouldn’t “panic” about the new coronavirus hold up perfectly well — panicking would have been an inappropriate response because panic is never the correct response.

So, yes, do not panic about inflation. Democrats should not, for example, suddenly abandon their long-held aspiration to increase production of zero-carbon energy just because there’s been a short-term spike in gasoline prices. If anything, the spike is a reminder that the fracking revolution did not, at the end of the day, spare us from the purely economic aspects of fossil fuel dependenc…