Inflation On Steroids
Sheldon Filger-blogger for GlobalEconomicCrisis.com
For the past several months my blog has warned about the growing inflation threat to the global economy. That, and other economic distortions of a massive character, have made stagflation-inflation plus low or negative economic growth-an increasingly likely trend. Over that same period, central banks have nourished the flames of inflation, especially in the U.S., where theFederal Reserve has preached the erroneous gospel that inflation was only transitory, and therefore not a trend that should be of concern.
Reality has now caught up with the Fed. At least some of the key players on the Federal Reserve have reluctantly agreed that inflationary pressures are real, and likely to be a trend and not transitory. And then there is Larry Summers, former U.S. Treasury Secretary. He recently told Bloomberg News that the Federal Reserve’s policy errors are stoking inflation, making 1970s style stagflation inevitable. He told Bloomberg News, “we have a generation of central bankers who are defining themselves by their ‘wokeness.’…they’re defining themselves by how socially concerned they are.”
The causal factors for this surge of inflation are due to reactions by both sovereigns and their central banks to the Covid pandemic. Poorly conceived policy decisions have disrupted supply chains and labor markets. For example, in February of 2020 the percentage of eligible Americans in the active labor pool was 63.3%. By September of 2021 the labor participation rate had declined to 61.6%. With millions of workers absent from the labor pool and production and shipping of commodities and finished goods globally impeded, the resulting shortages have spiked prices of essential products, including food and energy.
As though government policy was not enough, central banks through profligate monetary policies have flooded a constricted global economy with unprecedented levels of liquidity. The result was fully predictable; turbocharged inflation. That is why housing prices in the U.S. have risen by more than 20% in the past year. They are projected to increase another 20% in the coming year, despite a weak economy. Simply put, the Federal Reserve, through artificially low interest rates and an out-of-control printing press, has encouraged speculators to buy up housing stock as investment properties, taking advantage of cheap money.
A stagflationary calamity looms just over the horizon. Unfortunately, policymakers and central bankers, especially in the United States, seem totally out of touch with reality, residing in a parallel universe while the global economy is on the edge of a cliff.