when federal reserve chairman jerome powell said that tightening monetary policy will bring “some pain” to households and businesses he pushed back on the idea that the central bank would flinch in its inflation fight but how much pain is the fed willing to inflict before it has no choice but to raise its inflation target to quantify the amount of economic damage from the current tightening cycle—where rate hikes work on a lag of about a year inflation is both supply and demand driven and balancesheet tightening is about to ramp up—barron’s spoke with joe brusuelas rsm’s chief economist to estimate how high unemployment must rise to bring inflation back to the fed’s 2 target brusuelas puts a new twist on an old and increasingly controversial idea and concludes that the number of job losses might be higher than policy makers and investors appreciate