Inflation is all investors can think about right now. How high will it go? How long will it last? Can it be curbed in the US without a major recession?

There are useful comparisons to be made with the era of high inflation in the 1970s and early 1980s. But there are also many factors today that are unique to our moment, and they make it unusually difficult to predict exactly how quantitative tightening will play out. Below are three inflation “wild cards” that are worth considering.

The first is the way in which the financialisation of the economy could have an impact on the Federal Reserve’s efforts to tamp down inflation. Decades of low interest rates, coupled with several major bouts of quantitative easing following the 2008 financial crisis, raised both asset prices and debt levels.