Follow the Causes: Inflation, Money and Policy

A useful economic explanation traces how events move through prices, credit, wages, expectations and decisions instead of stopping at a slogan.

The paired portraits and credits appear on the series home. This is Martin’s independent commentary on Kohler’s published work. Alan Kohler has not reviewed or endorsed it.

Kohler’s documented work

What he has argued

Kohler’s reporting habit is to connect an economic result to the mechanisms that may have produced it. Inflation, interest rates and asset prices are not isolated numbers: supply disruptions, demand, credit conditions, wages and expectations can all matter, sometimes in different directions. A clear account should distinguish observed data from interpretation and forecasts. It should also make uncertainty visible rather than present a confident prediction as if it were already an outcome.

Martin’s response

Where I agree, and where I go further

That approach is the kind of common sense I value. People need explanations that help them reason, not a forecast that asks them to trust a commentator. In this episode I am not offering investment advice or a prediction about the next rate move. I am looking at how a causal chain can be explained and where public policy changes the conditions in which households and firms make decisions.

Open question

What I still want to understand

When a headline says prices or rates moved, what is the next question that would uncover the mechanism? Which parts are measured, which are inferred, and which remain uncertain?

Research trail

Sources

Published 18 October 2026 · Commentary by Martin Davies-Roundhill · Contact End Up Here