Soaring prices of food, oil and raw materials forced Japan's central bank to triple its inflation forecast last week, but fears of a US-induced economic downturn also led it to abandon talk of raising interest rates.
In Europe, where forecasts of economic growth in the euro currency zone were cut last week, data showed inflation had dipped last month from record levels but remained well above the European Central Bank's tolerance level.
In the US, the Federal Reserve is expected to announce yet another interest rate cut despite a similar inflation problem, as it tries to bolster an economy pummelled by a housing slump and collapse of the sub-prime mortgage market.
In all, news from the three regions highlighted the question of whether the industrialised world faces stagflation - little or no economic growth combined with high inflation.
The Bank of Japan (BoJ) said after a policy meeting that it had decided to leave interest rates at 0.5 per cent.
More remarkably, it chose not to signal the long-term need for a rate rise, abandoning a routine of the past two years.
The BOJ cut its growth forecasts for the current business year, which ends next March, to 1.5 per cent from 2.1 per cent, and almost tripled its inflation outlook to 1.1 per cent from 0.4 per cent.
It chiefly blamed the surging price of oil, food and other commodities plus contagion from the US downturn. Turmoil on financial markets had not had such a big impact on the funding needs of big Japanese firms at least, it noted.
Official figures also showed that Japanese industrial output fell 3.1 per cent in March, marking the biggest monthly fall for at least five years.
Euro zone inflation eased to 3.3 per cent last month from a record 3.6 per cent in March, a preliminary estimate showed, but that remains way above the European Central Bank's tolerance level of two per cent for medium-term price trends.
The estimate came hand-in-hand with a readout from the European Commission on economic sentiment in March. This slid to 97.1 points, its lowest level since August 2005, from 99.6 points in March. Economists had expected a drop to 99 points.
The Commission forecast that euro zone growth would slow to 1.7 per cent this year and 1.5 per cent next year from 2.6 per cent last year.
"The slowdown of the economy is putting the ECB under increasing pressure to cut rates at least on a medium-term perspective," said Commerzbank's Christoph Weil.
Europe, like Japan, may be able to count on demand for its exports from faster-growing emerging market economies. But it remains to be seen how much this can make up for a drop in US demand for their goods.
US consumer confidence hit a five-year low this month, according to a survey published by the Conference Board, a private-sector research group.