Strangely, America’s companies will soon face higher interest rates

The immediate impact, though, may be muted. Central bankers have long thought that monetary policy does not have an instantaneous effect on the economy; Milton Friedman famously described the lag between an adjustment and its impact as “long and variable”. Yet in the most recent cycle the lag, for corporate borrowers at least, seems to have been even longer than usual. The odd outcome is that just as policymakers are about to cut, perhaps sharply, interest-rate conditions for parts of the economy will tighten.