After getting freaked out by inflation caused by the rounds of helicopter money sent out after the economy was smothered for a head cold, the fed and their equivalents in the west have committed to raise rates until the problem is solved. It won't work, because they are solving the wrong problem.
Western governments (with a few notable exceptions) have more or less systematically adopted a policy of hostility to increasing production of goods and services. They have also systematically suppressed transitions to more dense and reliable energy sources at every turn. These policies are all done for noble sounding reasons having no consideration whatsoever for the structure of production and especially it's impact on the price level.
Ceteris paribus, a drop in output will always lead to a rise in prices. The western keynsian system (fascist economics) has relied on ever-increasing production reducing the cost of goods and services faster than money supply growth. Policy decisions to smother nearly all production and energy projects in red tape over the last fifty years have allowed some industries to tread water, but in general a slow de-industrialization has occurred. The only places the price level continued to reduce in my lifetime has been the high tech sector which is just now beginning to get BTK'd in red tape.
Still, this allowed us to just barely keep living standards around 1970s levels supposing you allowed some "hedonic adjustment". Which is to say lowering the standards of living to no longer include having a household until mid 30s or even 40s for most Americans. It was not until our wise overlords decided to douse the economy with asbestos over a cold that hostility to production and energy accelerated to the point you might be forgiven for thinking they've gone rabid on us peasants.
Fresh on the heels of that event which cratered production and papered it over with helicopter money, we now have western brain-dead energy policy biting off our heads. Factories all across europe are having to shutter, and it's likely this winter many will simply freeze to death for lack of affordable fuel. This is a result of 50 years of total opposition to the development and usage of ever denser sources of energy (fossil and nuclear fuels). This is purportedly for environmental reasons, but the impact of having to mine & harvest less, more dense material should be obvious. If an ounce of uranium is worth a ton of coal, you can close better than 9 out of ten strip mines.
Nevertheless, the obsession is with the least dense energy sources, such as the movement of the air, photons and the fusion of hydrogen. It does not take a genius to figure out that a systematic bias towards increasing the unit cost per KwH will reduce total output thanks to raising the COGS. This bias has been so awful that much of Europe had no choice but to import nearly all energy from the Russians, who have now cut them off for throwing a tantrum about Ukraine. This is the precipitating event for our current crisis; a necessary but far from sufficient cause. Real blame lies with bad energy and industrial policy for decades.
This one-two-three punch has resulted in a knockout blow for western production. The only thing that reduction of the money supply via rising interest rates can do is lower prices. This is cargo-cult economics; it will do nothing to change the very real fact that too few goods means a lower standard of living. As long as the rate of production falls faster than the money supply (which it will for some time), inflation will remain uncontrolled. The FED and central banks can do nothing whatsoever about bad fiscal, industrial and energy policy.
Ultimately a unified policy aimed at increasing standards of living via increased domestic production of goods and services, higher productivity, price and regulatory stability would have to be adopted. This will not be done until all the deranged bureaucrats are either sacked en masse or filter out from age-attrition. The likelihood of the former remains low, so the only way out is death. It's a hard way out.
If delusional policy is kept around long enough, the problem will resolve itself thanks to our impending demographic collapse resulting in persistent demand destruction. Maybe that's the Fascist policy of the future. Make sure that demand is dropping faster than production so you can juice money supply growth and keep the plunderbund rolling. Japan truly is the land of the future.
