In June, when eurozone inflation was accelerating across all sectors and all corners of the world, I was a part of a gathering of European finance academics. Inevitably, as lengthy dinners stretched into past midnight drinks, conversations about research drifted to things like monetary policy, and more concretely, the upcoming pivot by the ECB out of accommodative policies toward monetary tightening. A dozen or so of us could not arrive at a consensus as to what course of action the ECB should take, beyond an agreement that hiking rates and cutting back asset purchasing programs was well overdue.  That was…