ONLY 3 interest rate hikes???

You're not the only one. Only retards would think that this bird brain plan could work. Unfortunately, that's all we have in the Fed though. Jim Bullard is probably the most sensible out of the idiots, but even he isn't hawkish enough. To stop inflation and get ahead of the curve, the Fed would have to go Volcker style or at least go to 15%. Even though the CPI says y/y inflation is 6.8%, the actual rate is probably closer to 14-15%. Think about this though. In 2008, 5% interest rates is all it took to set off the financial crisis. In 2018, 2.5% interest rates was all the Fed could muster before the market started crashing and economy started tanking. We have far more debt than we did in 2008 and 2018.

I think I read that nonfinancial corporations accumulated a total of $11.6 trillion in debt throughout the course of the pandemic. Significant rate hikes would cause the government to default on the debt and cut spending. The real estate market and stock market would completely implode. You'd have another financial crisis that is way worse than 2008 and maybe even a depression like economy. If you were a Fed chairman or board of governor, what would you do? Do the right thing and raise rates significantly and set off this shit storm, or let inflation run rampant and try to explain it away as tRaNsItOrY? At the end of the day, despite its claims of independence, the Fed is just another political entity with its members being politicians. Politicians always choose the path of least resistance and kick the can down the road. As long as they push the problem off to another guy and get reelected, that's all they care about.