Contrary to a lot of predictions, inflation has been relatively subdued since the financial crisis. The Fed has consistently undershot its 2 percent inflation target. This fact has puzzled a lot of Fed watchers. But at Bloomberg View I argue that it’s no mystery: Inflation has run below the target because hitting the target isn’t the Fed’s priority.

The question I don’t take up in that column is whether it ought to be: whether the Fed should have refrained from raising the federal-funds rate over the last two years, kept growing its balance sheet, and so on. I don’t think that the Fed should be targeting inflation in the first place, as David Beckworth and I wrote in NR last year. But if the Fed is going to announce an inflation target in public, it should probably take that target more seriously than it has done.