Inflation? What inflation?
April 8, 2024Inflation? What inflation? It was fundamentally influenced by supply-related factors: disruptions in the supply chain, energy, and food. Not by factors related to a surge in demand… precisely because our middle classes and our poor are forced to limit their standard of living due to inadequate policies, and a multitude of asymmetric shocks that have…
The Year 0 of Germany
March 20, 2024This is striking! The energy crisis of 2022 has been the worst economic crisis in Germany since WWII when looking at the decline of real wages. The increase in the price level is very likely permanent – those with savings have unexpectedly lost some of their purchasing power. The real estate owners (upper middle class)…
This China which now exports inflation !
January 18, 2023While it has been THE fundamental source of deflation for the past 20 years, China will now export inflation. This country locked up for 2 years nearly 19% of the universal population that were prevented from consuming. This 1.4 billion individual now liberated will rush to buy, go out, live… with the global inflationary…
Recession better than inflation ?
December 17, 2022346 interest rate hikes have taken place to date around the world, an absolute record since the 1980s ! The only weapon to counter inflation is for the key rate of a central bank to exceed the rate of inflation by around 150 basis points, knowing that this rate must be maintained at these…
Interwinded
November 21, 2022China-USA: their respective inflation is moving in phase as this graph clearly shows. These two countries are therefore interdependent, despite their political postures.
Néolibéralisme et inflation
August 1, 2022Les tarifs du blé de retour à leurs niveaux d’avant le conflit en Ukraine…laquelle guerre n’est donc pas la responsable principale de cette flambée des prix. Mais alors : qui aura le courage de questionner ces augmentations brutales de tous les prix ? Par exemple, pourquoi les tomates ont-elles augmenté de 40 à 60% alors que…
Price control: a social emergency
March 31, 2022At 7.3% in March 2022, the rate of inflation in Germany is at its highest since 1981! With the situation being much the same across the whole western world – the whole world full stop even – the legitimate question of price control is now an incisive one. It is imperative to reduce this…
The lessons from Weimar
March 24, 2022Stagflation ravaged the economies of the 1970s. Candidate Jimmy Carter was able to beat Gerald Ford, the sitting president, by accusing him high and wide of having made the “misery index” worse, that being the unemployment rate and inflation added together, that was at 13 at the time. Four years later, it was Reagan…
Inflation is always and everywhere…
February 22, 2022The ghost of Milton Friedman and his oh-so-famous repartee of the 1960s when he said that inflation is “always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon” still haunts us today. It is true that this assertion may seem plausible. After all, the immediate consequence of inflation is a rise in prices, which are denominated in money,…
Germany’s grave historical manipulations
April 8, 2021Proof that the economy is also – and maybe first and foremost – political, German economists are now trying to rewrite history. There are some big names attempting to fiddle with the historical facts, adjusting them to fit their theories, or rather their fears. These ordoliberals, bordering on the fanatical, are warning against hyperinflation…
The most important job in the world?
September 17, 2020The most coveted job in the world is that of the central banker, who also arouses the hastiest of judgments, all over them like a rash, and sometimes even hate-filled. Vilified for exacerbating inequalities and dragged through the mud for maintaining zero interest rates, it’s only fair that we don’t try to claim bankers…
Economists on the verge of nervous breakdown
September 9, 2020Central banks are lost, and central bankers are now blatantly admitting that their tools and other monetary policy instruments used for decades to correct economic cycles no longer work! Yes: they have lost their magic touch, these central banks which are no longer omnipotent, including the most powerful of them, namely the US Federal…
A major challenge of our time
April 21, 2019Where has inflation gone? While the US enjoys one of its longest periods of economic expansion, and while it is pretty much at full employment with its best figures for fifty years, inflation is nevertheless miniscule. Will it one day make its return to our developed nations of integrated economies?