> The squeeze on workers creates two separate worries for policymakers. One is that households will rein in spending, worsening the hit from the war to economic growth and forcing companies to cut jobs as demand slows.

Well, yes, there's an incoming petrol/jet fuel shortage which is currently being disguised by running down inventory. That is necessarily going to hit consumption. Only way out of that is investment, which if targeted correctly both improves the economy in the short run and provides productivity benefits in the future.

There is, as they say, a war on.

> The other possibility is that workers will succeed in bidding up wages, fuelling persistent inflation even once energy prices fall.

This is the central madness of our times: people do want higher wages, but they don't want inflation, except a large part of inflation in a service economy is .. other people's wages.