For our top story abroad today, it is all about the US Fed two days’ meeting. Suggesting that the US Federal Reserve needs to stop lagging behind inflationary developments, is the polite way of describing what the world’s most powerful central bank must do when its policy committee meets this week. we need to mention that the Fed needs immediately to stop its asset-purchase program, guide markets towards expecting three and possibly more interest rises this year and bring forward to March the announcement of plans to reduce its balance sheet. It also needs to explain how it has managed to get its inflation call so wrong and why it is so late in reacting properly. Without that, it will struggle to regain the policy narrative and restore its credibility. Since the policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee last met on December 14-15, the US headline consumer price index breached 7%. The core measure of rising prices has gone above 5 per cent with broadening drivers. Unemployment has fallen below 4 per cent while labour force participation has remained unchanged, stuck below pre-pandemic levels. Moreover, the Fed’s estimate for its preferred measure of inflation — the core personal consumption expenditure index — for 2021 is 4.4 per cent, more than double what it projected a year ago, and the 2022 forecast has been raised to 2.7 per cent. Further upward revisions in 2022 are surely on the cards.