It was at the Mansion House speech in the middle of June that Mark Carney, the Bank of England governor, first warned that interest rates could rise.
That got more explicit on Wednesday.
Mr Carney told an audience in Glasgow today (23 July) that interest rates “will need to start to rise”.
Since the financial crisis erupted, the UK central bank has followed, more than led, the Federal Reserve. The Monetary Policy Committee, for example, adopted an unemployment target after the Fed’s Open Market Committee did.
But the prospect of the MPC lifting interest rates for the first time since the financial crisis reverses those roles.
Mr Carney and his colleagues can expect whatever move they make during the rest of 2014 - as well as investors’ reaction to them - to draw a keen audience in the US.
The question of when the Fed will begin to signal higher rates is the dominant one for investors in US assets this year, shaping the trajectory for bonds, currencies and stocks.
So the UK will become a useful, if imperfect, example for a US audience on how markets react when interest rates do rise.
Between Mr Carney’s warning on June 13 and his speech today, the FTSE 100 is up 0.3 per cent; the pound has appreciated 0.4 per cent against the dollar and 1.2 per cent versus the euro and two-year government bond yields have risen 8 basis points to 0.82 per cent.
