Finance & economics | Inflation

Rates are rising at unprecedented speed. When will they bite?

Long lags in monetary policy are no argument for inaction

FILE - A customer looks at refrigerated items at a Grocery Outlet store in Pleasanton, Calif., Sept. 15, 2022. More U.S. adults are now feeling financially vulnerable amid high inflation. A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research says that some 46% of people now call their personal financial situation poor. That figure has risen from 37% percent in March. (AP Photo/Terry Chea, File)
|Washington, DC

If you want to impress central bankers, inject “long and variable lags” into a conversation and heave a heavy sigh. The phrase, coined by Milton Friedman, a Nobel-prizewinning economist, is sophisticated shorthand for the delayed and uncertain effects of monetary policy.

This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline “The drag from lags”

The world China wants

From the October 15th 2022 edition

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