The zone's headline inflation rate has stayed stubbornly above 2% in the past year, although core inflation (which excludes energy and food) is now 1.8%.
The rising cost of petrol pushed the headline inflation rate in the UK up to 3.3% in June - its highest level for nearly two years.
An energy-driven headline inflation rate of 3% hardly spells disaster.
Higher oil prices certainly push up the headline inflation rate.
Second, the headline inflation rate, currently 3.7%, is expected to fall sharply in the next few months, as last summer's rises in indirect taxes and mortgage rates drop out of the calculations.
Russian inflation is as low as it is at the moment not purely through effective central banking and prudent management of interest rates, but also through the use of rather crude administrative controls on prices: hikes in utility fees, for example, usually occur in January but were postponed until April so that Putin could campaign for the presidency with the lowest possible headline inflation rate.
But with the country's "headline inflation" rate at 18%, the rupiah currency under pressure (a summer dip took it down 8%) and benchmark interest rates spiking above 12%, the home front critics have gathered.
However, the overall rate of headline inflation continued to fall at an annual rate of 0.8%.
There will be a dilemma for the Bank of England, because the headline rate of inflation is likely to rise even more above target.
With VAT and the Arab Spring falling out of the figures, 2012 is the year when the headline rate of inflation should come tumbling down.
But BBC business editor Robert Peston said the deal meant the licence fee would rise broadly in line with the headline rate of inflation - the Consumer Price Index, which excludes mortgage payments.
Complicating prospects for a future rate cut, headline inflation will likely go above 3.5% year-over-year by November, with more possible due to gasoline price hikes.
America's headline rate of consumer-price inflation rose to 2.0% in October, largely as a result of dearer oil and a jump in car prices, which had been heavily discounted the previous month.
Retail price inflation also slowed sharply in September, with the headline rate, which includes mortgage interest payments, standing at 1.7%.
Some Fed officials are uncomfortable that interest rates are so low when headline inflation is at 5% and the economy is still growing at a decent rate.
Headline inflation is going to rise further in March and April, and sadly that will see too many doom and gloom rate hike hawkes get too much air time.
The Bank tried to play down the bad news on inflation, ascribing it to the hike in indirect taxes in July's budget and (for the headline rate) the recent increases in interest rates.
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