Higher inflation looks likely to last into 2022. The Bank of England could be the first

big central bank to raise interest rates. Why might it make the first move?

You're listening to Money Talks from the Economist. Our weekly podcast on the markets,

the economy and the world of business. I'm Ratch Nashanbo, finance editor at the

Economist and also on today's show, how real-time data are changing the

practice of economics. The ideal world that we'd like to have is they're able to

kind of construct these real-time forecasts from the ground up and as a result

they're not going to run into the same traps they read in 2008 where it was

you know almost a year too late before they knew it. We were in a recession. And we

talked to Michael Dell, boss of the Economist Technology Company, about the

future of the PC. A lot of shareholders kind of abandoned our company and that

created this incredible opportunity to accelerate the transformation. So I guess

thank you very much for that.

First, central bank watchers have plenty to occupy themselves with.

Inflation is well above target in many countries. In Germany, Yens Weidmann,

president of the Bundesbank, has just announced that he's stepping down.

Investors meanwhile are watching anxiously for signs of when central bankers

will begin to raise interest rates. New data published today show the annual

rate of inflation in Britain dipped in September to 3.1% from 3.2% in August. But

inflation is likely to rise further in coming months and stay well above the

bank's 2% target, fueled by energy and food. Those same pressures pushed

America's rate of inflation in September up slightly to 5.4% from 5.3% in August.

...