Wage fears keep Trichet shadow-boxing

Globalization -- essentially the ability of companies to tap into cheaper labor in China and India -- was part of the reason, the OECD report's author Stefano Scarpetta said.

He also highlighted that inflation, while serious, was not on the scale that marred the 1970s.

Growth in unit labor costs, Trichet's favorite measure of wage inflation, doubled in many countries in the immediate wake of the 1973 oil price spike, and even tripled in his native France, OECD figures show.

The story was similar but on a somewhat smaller scale after the second oil crisis at the end of the '70s.

In the last five years, however, unit labor costs grew less than two percent a year on average in the euro zone, and those were five years when the price of oil was on the rise.

By comparison, the growth rate un labor costs closer to 10 percent a year in the 1973-77 period, OECD figures show.