No one likes high inflation, and it is easy to understand why. Although wages and prices tend to move in tandem over long periods, inflation erodes household purchasing power if it is not matched with similar increases in wages, and it eats away the value of households' savings. So, then, why don't we and other central banks aim for zero inflation? There are several technical reasons, but a more fundamental reason is to create a buffer against the opposite of inflation--that is, deflation. Deflation is a general and persistent decline in the level of prices, a phenomenon Americans last experienced during the Great Depression of the 1930s and one that ■Japan has confronted for most of the past two decades.■
>>5 Deflation can feed on itself, leading to economic stagnation or worse. It puts pressure on employers to either cut wages or cut jobs. And it can be very hard on borrowers, who find themselves repaying their loans with dollars that are worth more than the dollars they originally borrowed. I am sure we all remember learning in school about farm families in the Great Depression who couldn't pay their mortgages and lost their homes and their livelihoods when crop prices fell persistently.
Another important reason to maintain a modest inflation buffer is that too low inflation impairs the ability of monetary policy to counter economic downturns. When inflation is very low, interest rates tend to be very low also, even in good times. And when interest rates are generally very low, the Fed has only limited room to cut them to help the economy in bad times.