Central banks lose the plot

Paul Volcker was the US Federal Reserve chairman before Alan Greenspan. He was appointed by President Jimmy Carter in 1979 and served as the US central bank’s chairman until 1987.

Volcker was the man who, in an inflation-obsessed era (the 1980s), worked out that reacting to a rise in inflation didn’t work, and that central banks had to get ahead of the inflation curve and start setting policy (raising interest rates) before inflation became an issue, not after.