this is sort of the classic misunderstanding of inflation - which is not the price level, but the rate of change in the price level. There is a perception that when inflation stops, prices should go back down. No - they just stay where they are but stop increasing. For the government to try and force prices back down would, in the opinion of almost every sane economist in history, drive an economy into series recession. The issue is that when prices start to fall, people stop spending money completely waiting for prices to be better tomorrow, and that can drive the economy into a deflationary death spiral. No one wants to risk that, so there is never an effort to 'reverse' the effects of an inflationary period once it ends. Japan lost yrs of economic growth when it got stuck in deflation.