The Federal Reserve announced on Nov. 2 it would raise the federal funds rate by 0.75 percentage points to a targeted range of 3.75 to 4 percent.

The Fed stated: “The committee anticipates that ongoing increases in the target range will be appropriate in order to attain a stance of monetary policy that is sufficiently restrictive to return inflation to 2 percent over time.”

A 2 percent inflation rate would be welcome. But how the Fed is trying to get there amounts to an economic mess. Indeed, it’s hard to follow the Fed’s reasoning. Nonetheless, this is how the so-called “thinking” regarding how to fight inflation has gone for a long time.

Consider the current situation as summarized in the Federal Open Market Committee statement: “Recent indicators point to modest growth in spending and production. Job gains have been robust in recent months, and the unemployment rate has remained low. Inflation remains elevated, reflecting supply and demand imbalances related to the pandemic, higher food and energy prices and broader price pressures. Russia’s war against Ukraine is causing tremendous human and economic hardship. The war and related events are creating additional upward pressure on inflation and are weighing on global economic activity.”

There are issues worth raising here.

First, the Fed doesn’t acknowledge any culpability on its part for generating high inflation. But when we consider inflation is mainly a monetary phenomenon, here’s a case of the Fed playing pass-the-buck politics. That, of course, is not new with this Fed.

Second, as for the sources for our current bout of inflation, the Fed points mainly to pandemic-related imbalances, Russia’s war and vague mentions of higher food and energy prices and “broader price pressures.”

Hmmm. If that’s the case, how then will the Fed jacking up interest rates to slow the economy — which already is doing poorly as we suffer through stagflation — solve our problem of inflation? How exactly do higher interest rates rectify pandemic problems (think supply chains and the need for more workers) and war? Of course, the Jay Powell-led Fed might simply resort to taking a sledgehammer to the economy in the hopes of restoring supply and demand balance? In fact, that seems to be the case.

As the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council has noted before, the only productive thing the Fed has been doing since late last year is starting to rein in its 14-years-long, mind-blowingly excessive growth in the monetary base — currency plus bank reserves. There’s a great deal to be done on that front, to say the least.

Meanwhile, Congress should act, not by browbeating the Fed or injecting itself into monetary policy decisions (we don’t need even more politics in monetary policy decisions), but instead by restoring the Fed’s main purpose.

Congress imposed the Fed’s dual mandate of price stability and maximum sustainable employment in 1977. The amended Federal Reserve Act reads the Fed must “maintain long run growth of the monetary and credit aggregates commensurate with the economy’s long run potential to increase production, so as to promote effectively the goals of maximum employment, stable prices and moderate long-term interest rates.”

This has been a source of policy mischief and much distraction from the lone job a monetary authority actually can influence, at least in a positive way, and that’s price stability. Return the Fed to the lone goal of price stability, and that in turn will serve as part of the foundation for a strong, healthy economy.