And yet, still clinging to the mantra that the spike in prices is “transitory”, and to the likely delusional belief that inflation will be back to target by the end of the year, the ECB refuses to act.

Further evidence, many will say, of why a “one-size-fits-all monetary policy” doesn’t work.

But it’s not exactly that, is it? Inflation is way above where it should be more or less everywhere in Europe, and in the Baltics, it’s already in double digits.

The ECB may be right that the inflationary pressures will begin to ease from here on.

But to keep the foot virtually flat down on the monetary accelerator even as prices surge to those not seen since the early 1990s looks oddly out of sync with the tightening stance signalled elsewhere by both the US Federal Reserve and the Bank of England.

It might be argued that the ECB’s policy stance is just an admission of the inevitable – that Europe is falling victim to Japanification, or a permanent state of deflationary economic stagnation.

This might be true, but the more accurate way of looking at the ECB’s reluctance is that large parts of Europe simply can’t afford a significant monetary tightening.

Without persistent support from the ECB as buyer of last resort, the stresses and strains in sovereign bond markets last seen during the eurozone debt crisis a decade ago might soon return.

Today’s dilemma over what to do about resurgent inflation raises some of the same issues as were highlighted back then.

What the eurozone experienced was in essence just an old fashioned balance of payments crisis in which single currency members divided into surplus and deficit countries (the former more competitive than the latter) – but one that because of the straitjacket of monetary union couldn’t be resolved via the natural market mechanism of exchange rate adjustment.