N-P-R This is the Indicator from Thailand, Maddie.

I'm Darien Woods.

And I'm Paddy Hirsch.

If you check out a chart of interest rates over the last 100 years, it looks a lot like

a particularly dramatic mountain range.

The kind you might see in Patagonia or Kashmir, jagged peaks and plunging troughs.

If you look at the way rates tend to move over time, you tend to get spikes sharply

up in the air and then crashing back down again.

John Authors is a senior editor at Bloomberg.

He's also a keen hiker.

And for him, interest rate increases are like the steps a person takes to climb a mountain.

They're considered, they're careful.

Yeah, but that's when the climber's going up.

Don, whether you're talking about mountains or interest rates, is something else entirely

John says.

Not only is it equally difficult technically, it can be a lot more hazardous.

It is statistically shown your great preponderance of serious accidents and deaths for mountain

ears come when they're going down, not when they're climbing up.

Cheery?

Yeah, a little grim.

On today's show, John will tell us about his twin concerns for the economy when it comes

to climbing the interest rate mountain, first that the Fed could drive rates up too far

...