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“Inflation is likely to rise sharply in the second half of the year to above 4 per cent,” wrote Mervyn King, adding, somewhat unhelpfully, “there are considerable uncertainties in both directions around this”.

He cites the rising prices of wholesale gas, world agricultural produce and oil as factors beyond his control. “The global nature of these price changes is evident in inflation rates not only in the UK but also overseas,” he adds.

Yet while Mr King is certainly correct in his estimation of the causes of the problem, his attempts to find a solution, while economically sound, lack political clout. Most of the world’s economic ills are eminently solvable.

The oil price is too high: put pressure on Saudi Arabia to increase the oil supply and bring to shore some of the hundreds of tankers currently circling the Caspian. Oil supply is actually higher than demand, and it is not just speculators keeping the price artificially high. Saudi Arabia banks a billion dollars a day while the price of a barrel remains over $130.

Food prices have rocketed. A simple case of agricultural mismanagement. Indonesia should not be short of rice and there should not be food riots rocking Haiti and the Philippines. Surely the globalisation of food supply should have consigned the famine-struck ‘80s to a distant memory.

No, while Mr King is right to say there are global movements beyond his control, he is wrong to say he is not to blame. In our inability to move will into action, the situation continues inexorably to deteriorate. Solutions are at hand, but in our inaction we are all to blame.