LONDON -- Could inflation return as the curse of global economic progress? After years of relative price stability -- and in some countries, such as Japan, price decline and deflation -- could the old threat rise, like Dracula, from the grave where most people assumed it was safely interred, and drain the lifeblood from savings and investment, as it once did?

High inflation is certainly a nasty experience, and there is no guarantee that "a little inflation," which some economists call for, can be prevented from growing large, like a hideous tumor.

Quite a long memory is needed to recall just how devastating life becomes when money starts to lose its value and becomes an unsafe store of savings. In the three decades after World War II, numerous countries around the world, although not all, were paralyzed by the inflationary phenomenon: savings decimated, monetary value undermined and constant outbreaks of social unrest as a consequence of wages and other incomes lagging behind rising prices.