this week the federal reserve raised interest rates by 075 percentage point for the third time in six months in an effort to combat inflation the move made investors worry more about a recession even though fed chair jerome powell and other members of the federal open market committee fomc have repeatedly expressed their desire to produce a “soft landing”—meaning roughly to reduce inflation without causing a recession albeit with some slowdown in growth critics have expressed skepticism that this can be done many economists believe that the fed has managed a soft landing only once in 11 tries over the last 60 years in 199495 history these critics argue says that the fed will either raise interest rates too little and fail to defeat inflation or go too far and precipitate a recession—a “hard landing”