Reader B.M. thinks one of my recommendations for the Fed would unduly stifle the economy in the name of fighting inflation.

I argue that if the Fed is going to maintain its basic policy framework — and although I think better ones are conceivable, I also think the institution will be slow to change — it should correct an inflationary bias in that framework. The Fed in recent years has said that if inflation runs below its target of 2 percent per year, it will aim to have inflation above target to make up for it. But it has not said that it will correct past mistakes of excess inflation. I think it should: If inflation runs at 3 percent one year, the Fed should aim for 1 percent the year after rather than settle for 2 percent.

B.M. writes that while my tweak would have

some apparent benefits . . . it could also become an economically costly (and ultimately unrealistic) commitment.

It could require stifling economic growth not because inflation is too high, but because it was too high in the past. A de/disin-flationary recession induced by monetary policy would furthermore be a double whammy for indebted economic agents, including the public sector.

That’s a reasonable concern, but there are two points in mitigation. First, the immediate aftermath of a short burst of excess inflation is exactly when one would expect to be able to disinflate without generating much unemployment. (That’s been true even of our not-so-short recent episode of high inflation, perhaps because it followed such a long stretch of relatively low inflation.) The public, to the extent one can distill its view, still seems to want lower inflation more than it fears what it would take to get there.

Second, a credible commitment to correct such periods of high inflation should make those periods less common and less severe in the first place by better anchoring inflation expectations.