[sanderjd]

By the time the war in Ukraine began, people had been arguing for months that the Fed was waiting too long to increase rates, that inflation expectations were becoming unmoored, that the Fed's conclusion that inflation was "transitory" was incorrect.

Here's Larry Summers from November 2021[0]. Note that his argument there is that the "transitory" inflation argument had already been shown to be incorrect, because by three months prior to the beginning of the war in Ukraine, inflation had already been progressing for months, along with the will-they-or-won't-they debate over rate increases.

Here is a Fed statement from April 2021[1], which I think is the first one that uses the word "transitory".

Point being that no, the rate hikes that happened a few weeks after the war started in absolutely no way came "out of nowhere seemingly". Everyone had been talking about it for a year.

0: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/11/15/inflation...

1: https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pressreleases/mone...