New Zealand's Reserve Bank has raised its Official Cash Rate to 2.75% in response to inflation reaching 4.1%, a level not seen in over two years. Yet the move arrives with a quiet irony: the dominant source of that inflation is not domestic appetite or local excess, but the turbulence of distant conflicts and disrupted shipping lanes that no central bank can calm. The bank has acted within the boundaries of its mandate, tightening the cost of borrowing to cool what it can — but the deeper pressures battering household budgets originate in geopolitics, not in Wellington. It is a reminder that i