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Soft Landing

Topic

An economic scenario where a central bank successfully raises interest rates to curb inflation without causing a significant recession. The podcast debates whether the US economy has achieved this.


First Mentioned

9/20/2025, 5:16:42 AM

Last Updated

9/20/2025, 5:40:15 AM

Research Retrieved

9/20/2025, 5:40:15 AM

Summary

A "soft landing" is a multifaceted concept applied across various domains. In aerospace, it describes a gentle touchdown for vehicles like aircraft, rockets, or spacecraft, ensuring minimal damage, typically with a vertical speed of 2 meters per second or less on Earth. This can be achieved through methods such as parachutes, retrorockets (VTVL), horizontal landings, mid-air retrieval, or lithobraking. In macroeconomics, a soft landing refers to a successful economic slowdown that avoids a severe recession, often characterized by decreasing inflation and potential interest rate adjustments by central banks like the Federal Reserve. While positive indicators like cooling CPI and likely rate cuts suggest a soft landing, concerns about a potential recession persist, leading to divided economic perceptions. The term also extends to the artificial intelligence industry, where it signifies the need for a sustainable return on investment (AI ROI) to justify the massive capital expenditure (AI Capex) on GPU infrastructure.

Referenced in 1 Document
Research Data
Extracted Attributes
  • AI Industry Context

    Refers to the need for a sustainable return on investment (AI ROI) amidst massive capital expenditure (AI Capex) on GPU infrastructure.

  • Definition (Aerospace)

    A gentle touchdown for aircraft, rockets, or spacecraft, preventing significant damage to the vehicle or its payload.

  • Definition (Economics)

    An economic slowdown that avoids a severe recession, often involving a decrease in inflation and potential interest rate cuts.

  • Economic Goal (Central Banks)

    To raise interest rates just enough to stop an economy from overheating and experiencing high inflation but not enough to cause a severe downturn.

  • Economic Indicators (for achieving)

    CPI cooling, likelihood of rate cut, avoiding drastic unemployment rise and negative GDP growth.

  • Typical Vertical Speed Limit (Earth, Aerospace)

    2 meters per second (6.6 ft per second)

Timeline
  • Beginning of the period studied for monetary policy tightening episodes by the Federal Reserve. (Source: Web Search Results)

    1965

  • First soft landing on a suborbital trajectory achieved by Bell Rocket Belt. (Source: Wikipedia)

    Historical

  • First soft landing on an orbital trajectory achieved by Surveyor 1. (Source: Wikipedia)

    Historical

  • Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan engineered a notable economic soft landing, considered one of the few true soft landings in recent history. (Source: Web Search Results)

    1994-1995

Soft landing

A soft landing is any type of aircraft, rocket or spacecraft landing that does not result in significant damage to or destruction of the vehicle or its payload, as opposed to a hard landing. The average vertical speed of a soft landing (on Earth) should be about 2 meters (6.6 ft) per second or less. On other astronomical bodies with weaker gravity, the safe speed could potentially be higher. A soft landing can be achieved by Parachute—often this is into water. Vertical rocket power using retrorockets, often referred to as VTVL (vertical landing referred to as VTOL, is usually for aircraft landing in a level attitude, rather than rockets) — first achieved on a suborbital trajectory by Bell Rocket Belt and on an orbital trajectory by the Surveyor 1. Horizontal landing, most aircraft and some spacecraft, such as the Space Shuttle, land this way accompanied with a parachute. Being caught in midair, as done with Corona spy satellites and followed by some other form of landing. Reducing landing speed by impact with the body's surface, known as lithobraking.

Web Search Results
  • Soft landing - Wikipedia

    A soft landing is any type of aircraft, rocket or spacecraft "Lander (spacecraft)") landing that does not result in significant damage to or destruction of the vehicle or its payload, as opposed to a hard landing. The average vertical speed of a soft landing (on Earth) should be about 2 meters (6.6 ft) per second or less. On other astronomical bodies with weaker gravity, the safe speed could potentially be higher. A soft landing can be achieved by ## See also ## References [...] | Landing | Belly landing Corkscrew landing Crosswind landing Deadstick landing Emergency landing Flexible deck Forced landing Hard landing Shipborne rolling vertical landing Short-field landing Soft landing Splashdown Touch-and-go landing Water landing/ditching Floating landing platform | [...] Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia ## Contents # Soft landing | | | --- | | | This article relies largely or entirely on a single source. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. Please help improve this article by introducing citations to additional sources. Find sources: "Soft landing" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (June 2025) |

  • Soft landing (economics) - Wikipedia

    A soft landing in the business cycle is the process of an economy shifting from growth to slow-growth to potentially flat, as it approaches but avoids a recession. It is usually caused by government attempts to slow down inflation. The criteria for distinguishing between a hard "Hard landing (economics)") and soft landing are numerous and subjective. [...] In addition to being a certain type of business cycle, a soft landing may also refer to a market segment or industry sector that is expected to slow down, but to not crash, while the wider economy may not experience such a slow down at that time. For example, a contemporary newspaper headline read "Soft landing forecast for house prices as rate hikes stem growth". [...] In the United States, modern recessions and hard and soft landings follow from Federal Reserve tightening cycles, in which the Federal funds rate is increased over several consecutive moves. In modern times, the most notable, and possibly the only true soft landing in the most recent 16 business cycles occurred in the soft landing of 1994, engineered by Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan through fine tuning of interest rates and the money supply. A soft landing by a central bank is when

  • Soft Landing: Definition and History in Economics - Investopedia

    A soft landing is the goal of a central bank when it seeks to raise interest rates just enough to stop an economy from overheating and experiencing high inflation but not enough to cause a severe downturn. Soft landing may also refer to a gradual, relatively painless slowdown in a major industry or economic sector. ### Key Takeaways [...] A soft landing is a painless ending to a moderate economic slowdown. The term implies that the economy has returned to growth without a period of severe recession. The Federal Reserve and other central banks aim for a soft landing when they raise interest rates to curb inflation. The Fed has a mixed record in accomplishing a soft landing during past rate hiking cycles. ## Understanding Soft Landings [...] Vikki Velasquez is a researcher and writer who has managed, coordinated, and directed various community and nonprofit organizations. She has conducted in-depth research on social and economic issues and has also revised and edited educational materials for the Greater Richmond area. Learn about our editorial policies ## What Is a Soft Landing? A soft landing is a cyclical slowdown in economic growth that ends without a period of outright recession.

  • Landings, Soft and Hard: The Federal Reserve, 1965–2022

    "Soft landings," that is, cases in which the central bank tightens monetary policy to fight inflation but does not cause a recession (which would be a "hard landing"), are thought to be difficult to achieve and extremely rare. According to the conventional wisdom, the Federal Reserve has managed to achieve only one soft landing in the past 60 years—in 1994–1995. This paper studies the eleven episodes of monetary policy tightening by the Fed since 1965, and concludes that the central bank has a

  • What a Soft Landing for the Economy Means and What to Look At

    # A Soft Landing for the Economy: What It Means and What Data to Look At October 11, 2023 By Kristie M. Engemann SHARE THIS PAGE: Link Copied One of the definitions of “soft landing” in the Britannica dictionary is “a landing in which an airplane, a spacecraft, etc., touches the ground in a controlled and gradual way that does not damage it.” [...] So, what does it mean for the economy to have a soft landing? And conversely, what constitutes a hard landing? “I would say that a soft landing is when we increase interest rates and we manage to decrease inflation, but without causing unemployment to go up drastically and GDP growth to go negative,” Restrepo-Echavarria said. “And a hard landing would be yes, we increase interest rates and we decrease inflation, but at the cost of a recession and high unemployment.” [...] It’s easy to picture a soft landing for something like a spacecraft. But what does it mean to have a soft landing for the economy? If you’ve seen that reference in the news, it was probably related to the Federal Reserve’s tightening of monetary policy and the potential economic impact. “Tightening,” or contractionary monetary policy, is intended to restrain spending by consumers and businesses when there is higher-than-desired inflation.

Location Data

ソフトランディング, Center Street, 舞浜(大字), 舞浜, 浦安市, 千葉県, 279-8505, 日本

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Coordinates: 35.6335400, 139.8787559

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