A central bank cooling inflation without tipping the economy into a recession.
When a central bank raises interest rates to bring down inflation, the risk is always that it slows the economy too much and triggers a recession, the "hard landing." A soft landing is the rarer outcome where inflation comes down close to target while growth and jobs hold up reasonably well. It's the outcome every central banker publicly hopes for and rarely manages cleanly, which is why any data suggesting one might actually be happening tends to move markets sharply, in either direction, depending on how convincing the numbers look.
Part of the Open Bell Glossary — plain-English explanations of the terms that come up on the show. Browse every term.