There is a fair chance that by the time the trees come into leaf in Washington, Frankfurt and London, this decade’s inflation crisis will definitively be over. The eye of the storm has already passed and prices have been rising at rates no higher than central banks’ targets in recent months.In the six months between May and November last year, for example, the annualised rate of consumer price inflation was only 0.6 per cent in the UK and 2.7 per cent in the eurozone. Excluding volatile energy and food prices, annualised core rates of inflation were 2.4 per cent in both economic areas over the same period. In the US, the equivalent measure — the Federal Reserve’s favoured personal consumption expenditure deflator — was just 1.9 per cent with a headline rate of 2 per cent.

All central banks need, therefore, to bring inflation rates in line with their targets is to avoid a deterioration in price control in the US and UK and to effect a small improvement in the eurozone. If so, they can declare victory.

It goes without saying that the rapid demise of inflation on both sides of the Atlantic in the second half of 2023 was as surprising as its prior increase. Last summer, the Fed, European Central Bank and Bank of England all expected inflation to remain above target until 2025 at the earliest.