I'm John Datchel with Professor John Cochran.

He's a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.

He writes the grumpy economist substack page, I recommend.

And we're looking at the oil shot, which is what's happening worldwide now because of Strait of Hormuz.

And the interest rates expected in Europe.

And now we turn to the Federal Reserve. My understanding is that

at the last Federal Reserve meeting that was announced afterwards by the chairman, the count

according to Bloomberg was 15 times. He said, we don't quite know what's going to happen next.

Fifteen times. That's fair. But they're expecting something, and it is of

great interest to know what they're doing about it, anticipation. Oil price shocks, can they also

wait this out, John, or do they have to move beforehand? I think Powell's being wise.

Central Bank forecasts have proved themselves fairly useless in knowing what's going to happen in the future because, you know, the war could get worse, the war could get better. You don't know what's going to happen in the future. Various countries, including our own, could take good policies in response or could take catastrophic policies in response, like putting

in oil price controls and windfall profits taxes and export controls and all the rest of it.

Who knows what's going to happen?

So I think Powell is quite rightly saying, look, what we're going to do here is we're going to wait

and see.

And if the oil price shock goes away quickly and does not turn

into major inflation, then we don't have to do anything. If we see it starting to turn into

inflation, however, then we are prepared when that time comes to take decisive action. And I think

that's that's right. Your concern, though, is what that action is.

What is quantitative tightening compared to raising interest rates? I think the dangers of repeating

the 1970s, particular in 1979, are present. And one of the dangers which we talked about is the danger of

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