In Why the West Rules – for Now, 2 the Anglo-American historian Ian Morris develops an index of social development based on energy use, civil organisation, military capability and information technology.
In July, we pledged to keep the rate at this level “until economic slack is absorbed.” In October we complemented our conditional forward guidance with a forecast—but not a commitment—of when we thought that condition would be met. The decision not to commit to a specific date reflected the great uncertainty around the outlook.