By Seth Carpenter, chief global economist at Morgan Stanley

I am writing this missive on the flight back to New York after attending the ECB’s annual conference in Sintra, Portugal. The Fourth of July weekend commemorates American independence, apt timing given the recent Supreme Court decision affirming Federal Reserve independence. And while central bank independence was discussed at Sintra, more time was spent on the oil shock, inflation, and the monetary policy response. And of course, no economics meeting these days would be complete without AI. As ever, there were constant comparisons between Europe and the US, and therefore between the ECB and the Fed.