A lengthy period of very restrictive monetary policy was ultimately needed to stem the high inflation and start the process of getting inflation down to the low and stable levels that were the norm until the spring of last year”.
2  As the Fed well knows, the alternative is the route taken by Volcker’s predecessors, who did not want to hurt growth.3 Those policymakers made the great mistake, all too common in macroeconomics, of avoiding the pain of short-term adjustment in the hope that things would just come right.