My thoughts are, there are so many shortages and so many supply chain problems, but it might be because of fed manipulation of futures markets.

In a normal economy, shortages increase demand, and demand causes prices to go up, and higher prices create strong incentive to create supply. When governments put in price controls, it causes immediate shortages (or surpluses of things people don't want) because supply is unable coordinate with demand. But what if the Fed is manipulating futures markets to keep prices from exploding? Well, then that would have the same effect as price controls.

Of course, in a normal society, nobody would do that because they would lose their shirt financially. But the Fed effectively has the power to print up money. They are not interested in profiting from futures markets, they are interested in maintaining a certain economic order.