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An odd thing about permahawks — people who have been demanding, year after year, that the Fed raise rates now now now. (The same is true, actually, about the overlapping group warning nonstop about fiscal crisis.) They are, by and large, free-market acolytes who insist that markets know best; yet they also insist that we ignore financial markets that have been telling us that inflation is quiescent and the U.S. government is solvent.

Now, it’s OK to conclude that markets are currently wrong, although if you believe that they make huge errors that should influence your views on policy in general. But your confidence in your dismissal of market beliefs should bear some relationship to your own track record. If you’ve been warning about inflation, wrongly, for six or so years, and markets current show no worries about inflation — if anything they’re saying that the Fed will undershoot its target — I would expect some diffidence about demanding higher rates yet again.

But I’m not Martin Feldstein.