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This survey will journey through a country struggling with change, passing through Berlin, Stuttgart, Nuremberg, Cologne and Frankfurt. It will note that in some ways the future has already arrived: it is simply distributed unevenly. Much of it can be found in places where you might least expect it—such as in the eastern city of Jena, where the journey ends.

SINCE the Federal Reserve began raising interest rates in June 2004, the course of American monetary policy has been clear. From its low of 1%, the federal funds rate has been lifted, in quarter-point steps, at 14 consecutive Fed meetings. Alan Greenspan's dominance of the Fed's policy committee has been equally unambiguous. Now the way ahead is less obvious. America's central bank has a new captain, Ben Bernanke, several new crew members and an increasingly uncertain course to steer.

After all those rises, economists reckon that at 4.5% the federal funds rate is close to “neutral”—ie, neither stimulating the economy nor holding it back. Now the central bankers must decide how much higher rates should go and how to explain their thinking to financial markets. Stop too soon and inflation, already close to the top of the Fed's informal comfort zone, could become a problem. Raise rates too far or fail to make the strategy clear, and the consequences for America's unbalanced, debt-laden economy could be calamitous.

On March 27th Mr Bernanke will chair his first two-day meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), the central bank's rate-setting body. Financial markets believe that another quarter-point rise is almost inevitable. Less obvious is how the change in the leadership and composition of the FOMC (which consists of the Fed's board of governors and the presidents of regional Federal Reserve Banks, not all of whom vote) will influence monetary policy thereafter.

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