From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is Free Expression with Jerry Baker.

Hello and welcome to Free Expression with me, Jerry Baker, from the Wall Street Journal editorial page.

I'm delighted you're joining us this week. If you're not already a subscriber,

please subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen. This week, could the US economy pull off that rare feat,

a soft landing in 2023? For some time now, there's been a widespread expectation that we're headed

for a recession this year. Starting from behind in its battle against inflation, Federal Reserve

has been raising interest rates aggressively and is promising more to come in order

to get the rate of price increases down to a moderate and sustainable level. Economists and financial

market indicators, along with pretty much most of historical experience, have been telling us that

it's almost impossible to do this from the current high rate of inflation that we've had in the

last year without tipping the

economy into recession. The yield curve, differential between interest rates on longer term and

short-term government debt, for example, has been negative for some time. That's been a pretty

accurate indicator of recession for decades. Central banks, along with economists and the rest of us,

have long held out the hope that by calibrating interest rate increases just right, they can help the economy avoid a recession.

In this so-called soft landing scenario, they bring inflation down smoothly without precipitating a slum.

But it's hardly ever worked in practice.

Usually the Fed crashes the economy into the runway, unemployment spikes and output falls.

Now, there may be no more

dangerous, four-word statement in economics then. This time is different. But as 20203 has got

underway, markets seem to believe that perhaps we might just be able to buck history. With evidence

from last week's jobs numbers, that wage growth may be cooling sharply, even as

...