The Case for Opportunistic Inflation

http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2014/12/what-should-federal-reserve-do?sort=3#sort-comments
In the article "The Case for Opportunistic Inflation," the author discusses some of the unique economic circumstances that currently exist in the United States, and the resulting questions it leaves for the Federal Reserve as far as what to do regarding monetary policy. The author offers the idea of "opportunistic inflation," or exploiting areas of growth in the economy to increase inflation where possible. The idea comes from the mirror idea of "opportunistic disinflation" which came into being in the 1990's as a response to the rampant inflation that was an economic concern at the time. Twenty years ago, this strategy was successful in lowering the inflation rate to 2% without deliberately pushing the economy into a recession. The author of this article believes that a mirror strategy would help increase the inflation to an adequate level that will help to limit problems the next time the economy falls into a recession. The author does acknowledge that there could be some problems associated with this strategy, such as inflation increasing more than expected or desired, or increased financial imbalances.

It will be interesting to see what strategy the Federal Reserve chooses to adopt in response to the current economic circumstances, as well as the resulting consequences.