Weekend round up: Just one damned thing after another

War, Trump, inflation and terrorism. Our troubles are legion

Greetings,

And many thanks and welcome to everyone who signed up to Writing from London last week. As always, I am particularly grateful to those of you who signed up as paying subscribers because you allow me to keep on working.

Best wishes, Nick

I have been meaning to find a way to write about inflation for some time now, and until a few days ago the thrust of the piece seemed obvious. I would have delivered a complacent account in a superior tone on how central banks overreacted to a transitory supply shock caused by covid. Countries got back to work. Producers upped their game and inflation fell. The Nobel laureate Paul Krugman said last week that a return to low prices and solid growth (in America at any rate) was exactly what all sensible economists knew would happen.

By his logic, the frantic rising of interest rates was overdone, and businesses and people with mortgages suffered needlessly.  Central bankers care far more about controlling inflation than unemployment, and panicked, or so the case against them goes.

In any event, the worst is over. Except that it doesn’t feel that way. The covid crisis was not the only crisis to hit the world economy, and are troubles are multiplying