What a mess.

Consumer prices are accelerating faster than at any time since the early 1980s. The average 30-year mortgage rate is approaching 6 percent, the highest in 14 years. The stock market is melting down.

And here’s the kicker: Times will most likely get tougher before they get better.

As the Federal Reserve drives up interest rates in a high-stakes bid to bring down inflation, more people will be out of a job. Real wages (adjusted for inflation) will stagnate or fall. Businesses will fail. People who can least afford it will take the biggest hit.

Still, if we’re lucky and all the breaks go our way — most helpful would be an end to the war in Ukraine, which has led to spikes in food and energy prices — we may dodge a full-blown recession.

Instead, inflation might gradually recede, as the higher borrowing costs engineered by the Fed restrain but don’t crush consumer spending and business investment. In this “soft landing” scenario, a version of which was laid out by the central bank last week in its most recent projections, the economy would continue to expand, though at a far slower pace than last year. Unemployment would climb but not dramatically.

But make no mistake: The Fed intends to break the back of inflation by any means necessary — even if that means a “hard landing,” with borrowing costs jammed so high the economy nose-dives into a job-killing recession.