There was a more sophisticated and reasonable version of the same logic that made the rounds within central banks: It wasn’t that easy money was the cause of rising commodity prices, but that as higher prices were rippling out into other goods, people were led to expect higher inflation, which can be self-fulfilling. And it is of course true that if prices for the full range of goods and services people buy are rising rapidly, it is a sign that the central bank is creating too much money and should raise interest rates. But one-off rises in commodity prices, whether it’s something important to the economy like oil or more marginal like limes, aren’t the same as broad-based inflation. Rather, they are usually individual markets adjusting to changes in supply and demand.

But, according to transcripts of its policy meetings released this year, fear of the run-up in commodity prices kept the Fed from cutting interest rates in the late summer of 2008 when a financial crisis was spiraling out of control. It led the European Central Bank to undertake spectacularly ill-timed interest rate increase in both the summer of 2008 and the spring of 2011, as the central bankers fretted about commodity-driven inflation instead of the crises staring them in the face.

Next time there is a sharp rise in the price of crude oil or corn or copper or all three, we would do well to ignore the catcalls aimed at central bankers and just ask: Is this really an outbreak of broad-based inflation? Or is this just a bigger, more economically consequential version of the Lime Crisis of 2014?

Otherwise, the results for the economy will be awfully sour.