Your Weekend Reading: The High Cost of Taming Inflation May Be Coming

Central banks from Ulaanbaatar to Pretoria and Washington to London have unleashed aggressive tightening to combat some of the worst inflation numbers seen in a generation. And the blitz of rate hikes this week may be far from the last, with policymakers indicating they’re willing to tolerate recessions in order to control inflation. (Meanwhile the Bank of Japan roiled currency markets by intervening to prop up the yen for the first time since 1998.) John Authers writes in Bloomberg Opinion that—now that investors sense there won’t be a Fed pivot in the near term—the question is how much damage the economy will sustain. The key point Fed Chair Jerome Powell wants to convey, Authers says, is that he’s the second coming of Paul Volcker, a predecessor whose repeated rate hikes in the early 1980s are thought to have slain inflation.

Vladimir Putin escalated his war on Ukraine, staging what have been widely condemned as sham referendums in areas Russia occupies while ordering a draft of hundreds of thousands of Russians. More darkly, he and his deputies are threatening the possible use of nuclear weapons to keep what may soon be annexed parts of Ukraine. Protests erupted around Russia and flights abroad sold out, developments that were followed by the announcement of some exemptions to the massive call-up. US President Joe Biden said Putin’s moves should make everyone’s “blood run cold” as Washington decides how to deter any nuclear attack in Ukraine—or respond if one occurs.