Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s inflation record is much worse than official statistics show (“Biden Signs Up for Powell’s Inflation,” Review & Outlook, Nov. 23). As reported, consumer price inflation is the highest in 30 years. Based on actual prices, it is one of the highest inflation rates of the postwar period, matching the double-digit increases of the 1970s and early ’80s.

In the 1970s, the change in house prices counted as inflation, whereas today it’s what people can hypothetically be charged for rent that...

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell on Capitol Hill, Sept. 30.

Photo: Sarah Silbiger/Press Pool

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s inflation record is much worse than official statistics show (“Biden Signs Up for Powell’s Inflation,” Review & Outlook, Nov. 23). As reported, consumer price inflation is the highest in 30 years. Based on actual prices, it is one of the highest inflation rates of the postwar period, matching the double-digit increases of the 1970s and early ’80s.

In the 1970s, the change in house prices counted as inflation, whereas today it’s what people can hypothetically be charged for rent that counts. The 6% increase in inflation in the past year would be 10%-plus using 1970s methods, since house prices are up nearly 20%, while owner rents are up 3%.

The segments of the economy that are most vulnerable to a change in monetary policy to confront an inflation cycle are those that experienced the biggest run-up in prices. Commodity producers and manufacturers felt the brunt of the reversal of the ’70s and ’80s inflation cycle. Nowadays, the most significant hit would be in finance and asset markets.

Joseph Carson

Westport, Conn.

Mr. Carson was chief economist at AllianceBernstein (2001-17).

In “How the Fed Rigs the Bond Market” (op-ed, Nov. 18), Lawrence Goodman writes that “Fed purchases of Treasury debt have funded as much as 60% to 80% of the entire government borrowing requirement.” Soviet nostalgists must read that with a sense of longing. If only Gosbank had purchased Soviet debt in size, the country wouldn’t have fallen into the dustbin of history.

Except that Gosbank couldn’t rewrite reality. Communism was an abject failure, and an appendage of a government wasn’t going to alter that. What applied to Gosbank applies to the Federal Reserve today. To pretend that an arm of government can enable that government’s growth is wholly naive. That the Fed can buy Treasury debt in large amounts is a precise consequence of deep market trust in Treasury income streams, not the Fed’s buying power. The central bank is a rate follower, as opposed to a rate setter. In other words, Mr. Goodman mistakes causation.

John Tamny

Washington

In “The Fed Needs to Remove Its Blinkers” (op-ed, Nov. 17), Judy Shelton correctly argues that the Fed should set policy “unencumbered by earlier assumptions and ambitions corresponding to a different economic and political environment.” Nevertheless, the Fed should also pay attention to old truths enunciated by Milton Friedman and others, namely that inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.

According to St. Louis Fed data, the money supply (M2) increased by an average rate of 20% in the two years ending this past October. It is therefore no surprise that inflation is surging right now and that there is more to come. Yet in all the Federal Open Market Committee statements published this year, the word “money” is not mentioned a single time. How can the Fed conduct a sensible and coherent monetary policy without ever looking at money?

Robert Heller

Belvedere, Calif.

Mr. Heller was a governor on the Federal Reserve Board (1986-89).