Some might argue this means the ‘soft landing’ target has already been missed. As New York Times correspondent Jeanna Smialek pointed out this week, US recessions in 1989, 2000, and 2007 were all preceded by declarations of a ‘soft landing’. Softish landingsThe phrase ‘soft landing’ has been used in economics since the 1980s and was particularly prevalent when former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan successfully engineered one in 1994 and 1995. Blinder said the likelihood of landing the economy softly depends on how high the “plane” was flying before it began to descend. “Alan Greenspan’s perfect soft landing in 1994–1995 did not bring inflation down at all; it merely avoided what was thought to be a potential rise in the inflation rate.

Source: Wall Street Journal July 30, 2023 01:31 UTC