Apathy and anticlimax are what a central bank aspires to when the time comes for a momentous policy decision. By this measure, the Bank of Japan’s return to positive interest rates was a triumph – with high rates elsewhere, and governor Kazuo Ueda taking a year to reach this well-flagged decision, his 0.1 percentage point rise in Japanese interest rates sent no shockwaves.

The yen barely twitched. It is still close to the ¥150 lows against the dollar it found when US rates began to climb in 2022.