How the West Asian conflict upended global monetary policy
Five major central banks—the US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, the Bank of England, the Reserve Bank of Australia, and the Bank of Japan—met this week to deliver their rate decisions. Four of the five opted to pause and continue with existing policy rates.
Two smaller countries—Sweden and Switzerland—also opted to pause.Given the economic chaos unleashed by the US-Iran war, this was not a surprise. But it is a complete turnaround from the start of the year when, as ECB president Christine Lagarde put it, monetary policy was “in a good place”.
As recently as one month ago, the UK was expected to cut rates; there was a decent chance the US Fed would cut rates, too; and Japan was on a rate-hike cycle. But the closure of the Strait of Hormuz as the war escalated has forced authorities to abandon previous policy paths and adopt a wait-and-watch approach.The world has lurched from one crisis to another in recent years: a global pandemic (2020), galloping inflation following the Russia-Ukraine war (2022), the Israel-Hamas conflict (2023), the tariff war (2025), and the US-Israel invasion of Iran (2026).The current level of geopolitical uncertainty is comparable to the worst crises of this century for two reasons.
First, some of these shocks have persisted (since the Ukraine war), and all of them have accumulated to create a high level of geopolitical tension. Second, the old rules-based world order with the US as the hegemon, backed by allies in Europe and Asia, is seemingly changing to a multi-polar world in which each country wrangles the best deals for itself.
In this uncharted terrain, policymakers’ ability to predict future trends will be severely tested.Previous crises had some obvious policy fixes. For
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