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Look back at the mainstream media over the past ~2 years and there's been countless stories and opinion pieces to the effect of "there is no inflation, nothing to worry about".

Closest thing you'll see to someone ringing an actual bell at the bottom of a market is when the mainstream media starts repeatedly saying there's no chance of it going up.

That said, I don't think the Fed's even slightly incompetent in this. Rather, there's been a conscious decision that inflation is the least bad way out of the mess and so that's what we're in for.

Governments and consumers could default on debt outright or the central banks could inflate away its true value. They'll choose the latter for sure.

At the consumer level it's hugely mixed. We have a situation where in the space of less than one generation things like housing have gone from something that practically everyone could afford to something that's out of reach of even middle income earners.

At the same time we have electronics and other equipment that a generation ago existed only in the professional realm but which is now so cheap that you could buy one as a consumer purely for novelty value despite having no actual use for it.

There's been a huge bifurcation in the consumer economy. Pretty much everything seems to have become either ridiculously cheap to the point of being disposable, or so expensive that it's considered an investment. There's not much left that's in the category of depreciating assets but affordable to the average person with some effort. It's all one way or the other.