America’s economy has escaped a hard landing

WHICH CARTOON character does the American economy most resemble? The consensus view in recent years, as propounded by a former Treasury secretary, a former president of the New York Federal Reserve and the chief economist of a big asset manager, is Wile E. Coyote, the dogged but hapless adversary of Road Runner. They were referring to the unfortunate predator’s tendency to careen off a cliff, defying gravity for a few moments before plunging into the canyon below. America’s run of heady growth, the analogy implied, could not persist amid rampant inflation; a reckoning was inevitable. But in fact, since late 2022, it is inflation that has plunged, whereas the economy has pulled off something that the coyote never managed and leapt across the canyon.