A poll of 52 economists published earlier this month suggested that inflation - especially in the US -was going to remain high, and hence force the hand of the Fed to raise interest rates at least twice by the end of 2023. Conducted in part by the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, the results hint that policymakers are likely to embark on stricter contractionary monetary policies than the ones Fed chair Jay Powell has been touting so far. That said, they do reflect the strength of the economic rebound that the US has seen in recent months, when compared to the long-term average outlook targeted by the Federal Reserve. That inflationary pressures are growing is in some ways a good sign. Even while the pandemic rages elsewhere in the world, the US has come out strongly, with life normalising in ways far removed from how things were just 12 months ago. While the impact of the Delta variant on the country remains to be seen, it has sounded alarms in Europe as vacationers make their way often unmasked around the continent. If one were to assume that the US will continue to power ahead, the cost of money will likely creep up, and that will have implications for emerging markets in Asia looking to move forward.
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