Fascinating, isn’t it?

The relevance of this last one is to show that inflation peaks are usually pronounced, and rarely result in plateaus. Even if they do, those plateaus are of short duration after which the trend is that there is an almost invariable sharp decline.

Politicians can make things worse, of course: Thatcher did in the early 80s, which most people tend to forget, but there are always consequences for deliberately trashing an economy, as she did. These exceptions apart, it is clear that inflation has not only recently, but throughout 800 or more years of history had a habit of correcting itself.

The assumption underlying that. That previous governments didn’t – just never ever – change policy so as to reduce inflation. It all happened by magic instead.