Is raising rates by 0.5% anywhere near enough to get inflation to 2%, given that inflation is currently at 8.6%?
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
The current inflation is primarily caused by high energy prices, secondary by shortages (semiconductors, grain, vegetable oils, etc) and third (delayed effect) higher wages due to worker shortages.
In theory, a rate hike reduces demand. But it won't for the above goods and services as they're barely optional. People are going to continue to heat their houses, vehicles will keep moving, factories won't be shut down at scale. People won't stop eating either.
I believe the much more aggressive rate hikes by the FED, multiple already, validate this point. It's not done nothing to reduce inflation.
I'm thinking it's going to be energy savings (by consumers and industry) and working on energy alternatives/abundance to really kill high inflation.
Another example of a non-working instrument: here in the Netherlands the long term mortgage rate (15-20 year fixed rate) has more than tripled in just 4 months time. It doesn't even move the needle in house prices. It has slightly slowed down growth, and that's it. The reason it doesn't work is because there's no supply and the demand is not that elastic. People need a place a live.
In Germany apartment prices went down in few cities with an overheated market. If prices stagnate long enough inflation effectively makes prices go down like in Germany from 2000 to 2010
A lot of companies in Germany (same in the Netherlands) are exporters. The products they produce are not consumed by local consumers, hence higher wages do not increase local inflation.
Similarly, for some companies wages are a limited part of their expenses. Some factories have like 10 workers to produce millions of items of output.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/921364/value-of-m2-money...
It's way too early to make this claim. Fiscal policy such as setting interest rates has been studied and projected to take anywhere from 9 months to 24 months to see an effect on inflation metrics such as CPI. We won't know if what the Fed has done will have its desired effect until much later. We can only do what has been observed to have worked in the past and hope other secondary inflation drivers (i.e. supply shortages, commodities crisis) continue to die down.
[1] https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/staff/ecajt/inflation%20lags%20m...
Nobody expects interest rate hikes to have an immediate, direct effect on prices. The immediate effect it is supposed to have is not on energy prices but on wage negotiations.
If these expectations become entrenched the cycle is very hard to break. Only a severe recession with high unemployment will work at that point and nobody wants that.
You can already see the impact of this in the real estate market. Its not pretty and i believe they will play hot potatoes until the next administration can take the blame. Don't know how it is in EU but probably similar dynamics.
Nobody wants to be that guy who takes the fall for the next recession. It's going to last a long time and lot of people seem like they are poised to buy the dip again like they have before.
Remember that markets falling to 40% isn't an outright meltdown but we've had it fall far past 50%, 80% was the biggest fall and that is the more likely scenario.
So yeah, I think if by medium term you mean 1-2 years, it's certainly possible. Short-term there's basically nothing any single central bank can do about commodity inflation anyway. Lowering economic demand in the EU as a means to tackle high global commodity prices is a questionable strategy when the continent is on the brink of recession. They're screwed either way though.