That narrative diverges from another argument over the years -- for example from Germany’s Bundesbank -- that underlying conditions in some economies have long supported a pickup in prices.

One strand emphasizes the synchronized stimulus -- with monetary easing supercharged by fiscal largess -- as opposed to the asymmetric response during the financial crisis, when central banks cut rates and started quantitative easing, but governments reined in budgets.

“What we are doing is creating a policy framework that has an inflation bias in it, which is the first time we’ve had that in generations,” said Dario Perkins, chief European economist at TS Lombard in London and a former U.K. Treasury official. “The policy response is a war-time policy response.”

That conflict theme is one that Goodhart finds apt. In a March 27 paper with Manoj Pradhan, founder of Talking Heads Macroeconomics, he wrote that commodity costs will rebound with an economic recovery after lockdowns are lifted and stimulus takes effect. Inflation could exceed 5% in 2021, and perhaps even reach 10% -- outcomes resembling the aftermaths of World Wars I and II.

“The monetary and fiscal expansion is aimed at, and will succeed at, putting money in the hands of people,” Goodhart, a BOE rate setter from 1997 until 2000, said in an interview. “There will be some degree of pent-up demand.”

Goods disruptions caused by the virus -- for example with Brazilian farmers unable to harvest coffee beans -- might also linger. Colin Harte, a multi-asset portfolio manager at BNP Paribas Asset Management, warns that the supply side “could be more damaged than we realized.”

The further consequences of a potential unwinding of globalization, and a renewed focus on local production, builds on that narrative.

“In the latter stages of the recovery, amid continued de-globalization in goods trade and less elastic global supply, fiscal policies may begin to stoke inflation,” Berenberg Senior Economist Kallum Pickering said.

Some economic data might already point to price pressures. U.S. money supply is surging, and Tim Congdon, a longtime watcher of such data, anticipates it will see its largest increase in peacetime this year -- followed by an “inflationary boom.”

For some analysts however, the prospect of inflation is seriously remote in a world where unemployment is going through the roof.