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Welcome to the commentary magazine daily podcast. Today is Wednesday, July 13th, 2022.

I'm John Puthwords, the editor of commentary magazine with me as always executive editor,

A Greenwald Hyab. Hi, John. Associate editor and author of the rise of the New Puritans now out

by it today. Noah Rothman. Hi, Noah. Hi, John. And joining us today are old friend commentary,

commentary ink board member, commentary contributor, host of the Call Me Back podcast, author of

startup nation, dancing or high, Dan. Hey, John. How are you? So Dan agreed to join us to talk

about Joe Biden's trip in the mid east, but we got to start with the absolutely startling

inflation numbers that came out just about an hour before we started taping.

At an annualized rate, if you just took the June numbers and annualize them,

the inflation rate is 17.1% in the United States. Now, it's actually running annualized,

given everything that's happened this year at 9.1%, but Dan, I was looking back

at Paul Volker, who came in as the Fed Chairman in late 1979, and what he famously did

to combat inflation was to raise the interest rate, the Fed rate, to unimaginable levels.

Like at one point, it was at 20% to the Fed rate. What I was struck by was the number of times

that Volker, known as this rock ribbed conservative cautious, whatever, he was raising rates by

250 basis points, like basically, you know, 2.5% at a jump once 500 basis points. Right now,

we are in a position in which Jay Powell, the current head of the Fed, has I think twice or maybe

three times raised the rate by 75 basis points or 0.75%. Three times this year. Three times this year.

And clearly, it is insufficient. So my question is, if Powell looks at history,

could we see at the next, which I think is next week, the next Fed meeting?

I don't know. If you just, I mean, if you just sort of does what he's been doing and, you know,

...