The world economy’s resilience to oil’s rapid rise during this decade has owed a great deal to the ability of a robust American expansion to absorb shocks of all sorts. This time, though, this first line of defence for global growth looks very weak indeed.

As Capital Economics suggests in a timely report today, the malign combination of badly faltering growth with rising inflationary pressures now confronting the United States raises the spectre of another Seventies economic terror – stagflation.

points to a more painful outcome, not just for America, but for the rest of the world.