WE knew all along that inflation was the elephant in the room that the high priests of economic policies kept on ignoring for many reasons. It is a sticky and often-pestering problem, the bloody and senseless war thousands of miles away that drives surges in prices of critical stuff may drag on for months or years, the neglect of domestic food production for generations is now haunting the nation, and finally, this: the current apparatchiks in charge of reining in inflation are clueless on the how-tos.

With all economic assumptions upended, especially in the developed economies where even a succession of interest rate hikes designed to tame inflation failed to temper jobs growth and cool down the broader economy, inflation-fighting needed a lot of policy adjustments and rethinking. The usual rules and strategies no longer apply.