Thursday 27 October 2022

Inflation : Irish Energy Blog proven correct, Major Economists Wrong



Last October, I wrote an article predicting that inflation would not be temporary :


Almost every other major economist at the time was predicting that inflation would be temporary or "transitory" :



Jan 22 :



It appears that the people who's job it is to understand inflation do not understand it. In very simple terms, this is how it works :

Inflation is too much money chasing too few goods. 

It does not matter the cause of supply shortages. 

You must not increase the money supply during supply or production shortages.  

If a country has four production facilities and three close down, then printing money will cause a surge in inflation because the money supply has increased when production supply has decreased in this case by 75%. The monetary policy was the opposite of what needed to happen. 

It does not matter the reason for the three plant closures - bad weather, pandemic, war, fuel shortage, aliens etc - the effect is the same, viz, a reduction in production. 

Yet, this is exactly what economies all across the world did during the Covid lockdowns - they printed massive quantities of money during a period of very low output (and low interest rates). While the lockdowns were destructive in themselves, printing money simultaneously was like throwing petrol on the fire and for that reason I don't see an end to the inflation crisis for quite a few years. 

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