The men and women in the hot seats at central banks have had it relatively easy in 2022. They would probably disagree but, as inflation rose to the highest levels in 40 years on both sides of the Atlantic, there was always someone else or some other thing that could credibly be blamed.

Whether it was Vladimir Putin’s weaponisation of gas and oil supplies, the Trump and Biden administrations’ overgenerous support to US households, a worldwide surge in goods demand at a time of stretched supply chains or (in the UK) the disastrous Trussonomics experiment, rapidly rising prices often had a proximate cause that left central banks in the clear.

They had to mop up the damage, for sure, raising interest rates far above expectations at the beginning of the year. US interest rate expectations for the end of December 2022, for example, started the year at less than 1 per cent, but ended it at a rate between 4.25 and 4.5 per cent. This revolution in thinking came alongside far higher than expected inflation data and was therefore highly visible and easy to explain.