Just what you don’t want after raising interest rates: a slew of poor economic data. Less than a fortnight after the Bank of Japan doubled interest rates to 0.5 per cent, it transpires that inflation, such as it was, petered out in January and workers’ wages slumped. Core consumer prices were flat year-on-year, after a 0.1 per cent rise in December.

For global investors, if not impoverished salarymen and Japan’s discomfited central bankers, the news may be welcome. Zero inflation, which is at the bottom end of the BoJ’s comfort zone, provides another indicator that future rises will be very gradual.