Global central banks mark a possible plateau

The Bank of England's decision to hold its policy interest rate steady on Thursday puts the world's three major central banks in a "higher-for-longer" holding pattern the length of which will hinge on how inflation behaves, the strength of U.S. growth and the depth of developing slowdowns in Europe and the UK, and whether bond markets sustain the higher borrowing costs that have attracted notice on both sides of the Atlantic. No central bankers have declared the era of synchronized rate hikes over, and both Fed Chair Jerome Powell on Wednesday and Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey on Thursday indicated their priority remained returning inflation to the shared 2% target, and that they were open to raising their benchmark short-term rates again if price pressures prove more persistent.