A fine mess: Weak inflation prompts a global central bank reset

That prompted the top central banks to review how they do business, and on Thursday the European Central Bank (ECB) joined the Federal Reserve and the Bank of Japan (BoJ) in pursuing an ambitious reset in hopes of reasserting control.

IT is an article of faith among central bankers that the decisions they make about how much money to create and what interest rate to charge for it will determine the rate of inflation – at least over moderate lengths of time.

For more than a decade that belief has been undermined by inflation that has remained weak despite trillions of US dollars pumped into the world’s biggest economies through quantitative easing programmes and ultra-low interest rates.