Think back to 2008-2009, when we were printing money like crazy, interest rates went to 0, quantitative easing - inflation hawks were coming out of the woodwork. Terrible predictions of doom and gloom, the dangers of monetizing debt, the inflation we are setting ourselves up for is going to be epic. And these people were not hysterical - they were referring to historical attempts to monetize debt and solid overall econ theory in making their predictions.

10 years later, didn't happen. Almost everyone who is being remotely honest with themselves really has to admit that the last decade has played out far better than they'd have predicted 10 years ago. Even those who for some reason thought they needed an orange guy to make an already great country "great again".

Not to say there's a time limit on the potential impact of those policies 10 years ago - bad expectations could still come true. But one thing is certain about the future - it almost never does what we think it would do. I can recall doom and gloom predictions about trade and budget deficits all the way back to the early '70s, when I was first figuring out what a deficit was. Of course, we did have a decade of stagflation, followed by a resurgence starting in the early '80s that lasted all the way to the collapse in 2008 (with some brief downturns thrown in). In 1980, everyone thought we needed to learn Japanese, because we were being economically colonized!

Things never turn out the way we think they will. And we Americans are perpetually predicting doom and gloom.