Dylan Pahman and Alexander William Salter:

It would be one thing if inflation were unforeseeable, but it isn’t. The Federal Reserve flooded the market with money for years and supported the market for government debt. Politicians ran record deficits as the Fed happily purchased bonds. The result was an unprecedented money-supply increase, to almost $22 trillion today from about $15.5 trillion in March 2020—far outpacing the market’s need for liquidity. Policy makers kept the money flowing despite clear warning signs. The Russian invasion of Ukraine contributed to inflation, but not nearly as much as America’s own fiscal and monetary profligacy.

Even if policy makers had the best of intentions, the exigencies of the moment don’t justify yoking the underprivileged to the burden of fading purchasing power. The engineers of today’s inflation violated the biblical commandment to maintain a stable currency. Those in authority are supposed to protect “the least of these” from exploitation. Instead, they made the economically insecure even more vulnerable.