The world’s most-watched central banks are finally stamping down on a surge in inflation. But this week it became clear that they know this comes at a cost.
From the UK, where the Bank of England raised interest rates for the fifth time in as many meetings, to Switzerland, which bumped up rates for the first time since 2007, policymakers in almost every major economy are turning off the stimulus taps, spooked by inflation that many initially dismissed as fleeting.
But for the big two in particular — the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank — the prospect of sharply higher rates brings awkward trade-offs. For the Fed, that is in employment, which is at risk as it pursues the most aggressive campaign to tighten monetary policy since the 1980s. The ECB, meanwhile, this week scrambled an emergency meeting and said it would speed up work on a new plan to avoid splintering in the eurozone — an acknowledgment of the risk that Southern Europe and Italy in particular could plunge in to crisis.