Looking back on three months’ worth of extreme market volatility it is clear that global currency wars have entered a new and more complicated phase. In effect, volatility has neutered the power of those central banks that have been most committed to weakening their currencies. The Bank of Japan provides the most notable example of impotence.

It was quite a paradox that a country with Japan’s level of public sector debt turned into a haven in a global market storm, but that was the case in the first quarter of 2016. The sharp appreciation of the yen against the dollar, despite negative policy interest rates, reversed the normal currency market laws of gravity. And since the equity market has tended to move in tandem with the yen since the inception of Abenomics in 2012 — logical enough given the impact of competitive devaluation on export volumes or corporate profits — Japanese equities have tumbled.

In Europe, meantime, the super-dovish rhetoric of Mario Draghi no longer works its magic. On the announcement of a monetary package more radical than expected last month, the euro rose against the dollar. The speech by Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen last week, in which she indicated that US rates might stay lower for longer, then rubbed salt in the eurozone’s wounds.