Discuss the following topics using critical thinking:

-Inflation level, 2020, 2021, 2022

The Fed's economic forecasts are all over the map, a sign of how uncertain these times are

The Federal Reserve's economic outlook is not so much pessimistic as it is uncertain, with expectations running a wide gamut from a plodding recovery to a sharp rebound.

The Fed released its Summary of Economic Projections for GDP, unemployment, inflation, and interest rates. The estimates largely reflected the current unprecedented downturn followed by expectations for varying levels of growth ahead.

Specifically, on GDP, which measures goods and services produced and is the broadest measure of economic growth, the median figures in each of the three years for which estimates were provided masked wide disparities of views from the policymaking Federal Open Market Committee's 17 members.

For 2020, the median expectation was for a GDP decline of 6.5%. But that was merely the midpoint of forecasts that ranged all the way from -10% to -4.2%.

The difference gets even more pronounced in 2021, where the median is a 5% gain but the range goes from -1% in essence, a continuation of the recession that started in February 2020 to a 7% gain, which would be the fastest one-year growth rate since 1984.

The outlook for unemployment and inflation all showed a substantial disparity of opinions.

"They've been pretty honest and straightforward about the high level of uncertainty that they see around how the economy's progressing, which is nice," Kathy Jones, head of fixed income for Charles Schwab, said of the Fed policymakers.

Powell notes 'high level of uncertainty

Indeed, Federal Reserve Bank (FED) Chairman, Jerome Powell has been emphasizing that even with all the rescue funding that the central bank and Congress have been providing, the strength of the recovery is largely dependent on the path of the coronavirus.

"Given the unusually high level of uncertainty about the outlook, many participants noted that they see a number of reasonably likely paths for the economy and that's not possible to identify with confidence a single path as the most likely one