The cult of inflation targeting began in New Zealand in the late Eighties. We may date its demise to a remarkable ideological pivot in the same country thirty years later, and with it the end of central bank ascendancy across the world.

Let us at least hope that the great monetary misadventure has burned itself out. In the wrong circumstances the doctrine of inflation targeting is a formula for asset bubbles and deranged financial cycles, and that is precisely what events have conspired to produce.

Claudio Borio from the Bank for International Settlements says the policy fraternity is relying on a compass with a broken needle. Powerful global forces have changed the character of inflation and smashed the old Phillips Curve model used by central banks, who keep getting their forecasts wrong. “If one is completely honest, how much do we really know about the inflation process?” he said.

New Zealand has had enough. Jacinda Ardern, the new Leftist premier, is to push for a change in the famous mandate of the country’s reserve bank. In the future it will target jobs as well as consumer prices. Her gripe is that “capitalism has failed”. I would rephrase that as a critique of central bank orthodoxy.