Americans used to seeing their retirement accounts and other investments zoom ever higher suffered a reckoning this week, as markets endured their worst week since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

“If the Fed is too aggressive, it could send the economy crashing into recession and cause unemployment to soar and economic misery to spread. But if it’s too nonchalant about the threat, higher inflation could become an enduring feature of the economy, eating away at wage gains and depressing quality of life.”