A fracking boom helped the U.S. become less dependent on foreign oil. Photo: AFP/Getty Images It’s a remarkable fact about a decade that was so economically disappointing for so many: The U.S. economy was growing for the entirety of the 2010s, making the current economic expansion the longest in American history .
Now the critique you hear more frequently is that the Fed, despite all its extraordinary efforts in the early part of the decade, is and has been too tight. Far from sparking uncontrolled inflation, the Fed has often failed this decade to meet its 2 percent inflation target. The Fed’s excessive focus on controlling inflation has led it to neglect its other mandate, full employment.
A rising oil price still creates winners and losers in the U.S., but those winners and losers come much closer to canceling each other out than they have in decades. That means oil-price shocks no longer pose nearly as serious a recession risk to the U.S. as they used to, which in turn has given us a freer hand in foreign policy: Democrats can question the long-standing U.S.