The federal bank performed quantitative easing between 2008 and 2014 as well, during the last economic crisis, but no one complained about "money printing" then. Inflation over the last few years has been a largely global phenomenon, which most economists attribute to supply chain disruptions, increased demand, and rising energy costs.
The "supply chain disruptions" explanation was always complete garbage. When there's a supply chain disruption, the price goes up and then comes back down when the disruption ends. It's very easy to see that the money supply barely increased from 2008-2014 and jumped massively during covid. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WM2NS
Those QE periods were minuscule in how much they printed compared to this last phase we have entered. The rise in M2 money supply is out of this world.
It can't happen as long as the US dollar is the world reserve currency - every other country will inflate almost as much as the US, keeping the demand in US dollars.
And the USA will never lose that status as long as it keeps importing things from so many other countries. Oops!
I now think that we've been lied to big time: One thing Covid was good for was to provide a cover story for massive inflation that was likely coming no matter what. I'm not saying it was released for that reason (and yes, I do think it was deliberately released) but governments worldwide certainly took full advantage of the chaos and uncertainty to pull off all kinds of devious projects that they had on the back burner. Look at how effective Covid was at ending the democracy movement in Hong Kong, for example. Massive overhang of inflation? No problem!
