The Fed came under intense criticism for its delayed response to inflation last year, stepping in to raise interest rates when annualized inflation was already at 7.9%. Many critics targeted Fed Chair Jerome Powell, who along with several other top officials, had said in 2021 that rising prices were only temporary.
One of Powell’s most ardent detractors is Mohamed El-Erian, an economist and president of Queens’ College, Cambridge. El-Erian’s latest advice to Powell is about optics and how to avoid making a bad situation worse.
