As someone who lived through hyperinflation in Zimbabwe, my observation is that printing money is a viable strategy for power players to remain in power.
Government here has paid for an army it can’t afford, paid for a civil service that is unproductive, and enriched itself indefinitely, all with a printing press that robs ordinary people of their money.
In this game, rich people who already own assets are largely protected because their assets are largely inflation proof.
People running businesses that make essential goods are largely immune because they adjust their prices to hedge against inflation.
The people who lose are the asset-less working and lower middle class. As a teacher in Harare in the 2000s, for example, I watched my salary fall from $150 USD/month to $30 USD/month in the space of 9 months.
During this time, going out for dinner (when you could afford to) required a sports bag full of 100 000 dollar notes, which soon became billion dollar notes, and finally, trillion dollar notes. If I recall correctly, the game ground to a halt only after the release of a 100 trillion dollar note, when members of the army refused to be paid in the currency. Government announced, over night, that USD would be legal tender the following day.
When that happened, I noticed that teachers’ salaries were roughly $1400 USD per month. Assuming that this was the underlying value of a teacher, the money printing in effect robbed $1370 USD from every teacher, every month and stole even more from the minimum wage workers ( whose income went from $8 USD/month to $170 USD/month).
When I see the money printing going on in Britain with no plan to reduce debt, I see the slow and steady creation of Zimbabwe. The strange thing is, many Brits I speak to seem to think there is something “different” about Britain, as though behaving like Zimbabwe will lead to an outcome other than Zimbabwe.
Earlier in the year I was muttering to myself that you cannot shut down the economy, close down our energy supplies, relying on cucumber juice and sunbeams to heat our homes, print money to pay the grocery bills (Okay call it QE or what ever you want – I don’t care) and expect no adverse consequences. It was the economist’s version of the perpetual motion machine, so beloved of fantasists and charlatans over the centuries. Well none of them work and Boris is toast – unfortunately so am I.
Last edited 2 years ago by Terry Needham
Paul Smithson
2 years ago
Nothing to worry about as anyone who has been paying attention knows that Klaus Schwab and his ‘friends’ have it all sorted out.
It is called ‘The Great Reset’ and it comes with a catchy slogan that you’ll hear being used by everyone from Johnson to Biden; Build Back Better.
You’ll own nothing, but you’ll be happy 🙂
But don’t mention this to anyone or they’ll call you a conspiracy theorist, even though the WEF and our politicians are all openly talking about it and have been for a long time.
So there’s no need to worry about inflation or a return to the 1970s. Problem solved.
Looking at the political headwind of pretty much every major nation one would be naive to not realise the ever increasing influence that organisations such as the WEF, WHO, the IMF and the WBG have on our day to day lives, and our futures. This influence has increased dramatically over the last two years. These organisations are anything but ‘powerless’ and their rhetoric is anything but ’empty’.
When Schwab says “you will own nothing” it is clear he is not including himself and fellow arrogant billionaires who already own pretty much of everything. They intend to own it all and we will be their serfs.
That is the way of the ‘communists’ and always has been. A thin layer of elite overlords and then the rest of the rabble. Pity is that they have a huge chunk of gullible people who think they are leading the world to a more equitable future.
Pete Kirby
2 years ago
‘ Real ‘ inflation is already well above the official figures and has been for some time. Just look at the petrol, diesel and food price rises over the past few months.
We had strong Unions in the UK during the 1970’s. Other than a couple of notable exceptions, we do not have strong Unions now so workers will not be able to achieve inflationary pay rises.
Interest rates will not rise appreciably as that would put people out of their homes on to the streets and that will not be allowed to happen in this day and age. The Government will intervene as people now expect it to. We no longer live in a society where if things go wrong, the individual is responsible for themselves and are left to get on with it. The all embracing nanny State will provide.
I do not know what the answer is and I suspect that our leaders do not know either. They will bumble along and throw even more ‘ free ‘ money at the problem I suspect and people will get poorer.
As the author of the article knows, some historical knowledge is necessary in order to navigate the present. I am 51 years of age so was of primary school age during the 1970’s but I remember trash being piled up in the streets. Talking to people who went through those times as adults has always been useful. My parents were very close to handing the house keys back to the bank manager seemingly and making ends meet was extremely difficult.
The causes of the present inflationary pressures are numerous but the common denominator is the handling of the pandemic in my opinion. Shutting down the economy was never going to end well but not enough people thought beyond the panic and raised concerns about what was happening. With pretty much the entire population focussed on saving lives instead of stepping back and looking at the bigger picture, they were blind to both the obvious and less obvious consequences of such flawed thinking.
You reap what you sow. Get on with it.
Perhaps a look at how Sweden is doing? The MSM won’t of course, because Sweden was an outlier when the group think of every other country was to impose lockdowns.
The latest forecast show, predictably, that Sweden is outperforming most of its EU peers in terms of real GDP growth, with inflation forecast to remain below the EU average.
Of course, Sweden was not entirely insulated from the effects of lockdown – as a very open and relatively small economy, it was dependent on trade with locked down partners.
“With pretty much the entire population focussed on saving lives instead of stepping back and looking at the bigger picture,”
The covid response was never about saving lives. And it did not either.
Simon Denis
2 years ago
It is typical of Johnson’s irresponsible fatuity and indolence that he should have let this happen. One might describe him as a bull in an economic china shop, except that he’s more like a cowardly elephant, so terrified of confronting the mouse called “fiscal laxity” that he charges in any direction to avoid it, doing much damage of his own in the process. Meanwhile the rodent grows and proliferates into the gnawing rats of inflation.
They say power corrupts. How true! But it also exposes. It exposes the flaws and qualities of whoever wields it. Johnson is now under the pitiless spotlight of history and will one day stand revealed as the most spineless, over promoted, under qualified coward ever to have squeezed his rump onto the prime ministerial chair. Such characters are themselves a sign of cultural morbidity and they serve as the chaotic prelude to even worse.
If politics descends into a shouting-match of abuse, we will end up like the USA where no consensus can develop. Please use argument, not abusive language.
There is argument. I am not to blame if you ignore or fail to notice it; nor will I stoop to repeating myself. The points are there and if you are fair minded you will try to take them in. And the language is not “abusive”. It may be insulting, but insults, couched in decorous, formal language, are the conventional and deserved punishment of the deceitful, the treacherous, the fatuous and the weak – ie, Johnson.
There is a continuity and it is ridiculous to blame Boris for trends of many years. Boris got Brexit done and if he does nothing else deserves huge credit for respecting the democratic vote of 2016 when so many lunatics were screaming for the undemocratic rejection of Brexit and shamefully voted accordingly. In the last election there was only one issue and that was “democracy” and only one person standing for it and that was “Boris”.
That’s fine Robert if you believe the 2016 was a fair vote. Sadly there’s a mountain of evidence to show a load of dirty tricks & law breaking. A fair few of those involved are in various roles in Johnston’s government.
Getting Brexit done will prove his undoing.
At a time when the U.K. needed parters most it’s torched most of those relationships
No other leader in Europe or the G7 has any respect for Johnston
One person? So he was impersonating Gove and Farage and Hannan and Teresa Villiers, was he? Second, whilst a man may well be praised for some fine particular action or intervention, this does not give him carte blanche to do as he pleases, without criticism, thereafter. One lonely courageous stand for Brexit does not compensate for a flock of failures, collapses, U-turns, derelictions and disappointments since. Johnson and Gove were right about two things in 16: leaving the EU and Johnson’s unfitness for high office.
mmmm, maybe ‘get brexit done’ was merely his ticket to have a nice office in 10 downing street whether he thought it was right or not…
Jeremy Bray
2 years ago
In a global market place the market price of work can become locally disrupted if there is a sudden squeeze on supply. So gas shoots up in price as alternative energy sources are squeezed. The price of GPs go up because we have failed to train enough in the UK and the problem is exacerbated because they then become so well paid their logical course is to restrict their time working- a propensity increased by having trained a high proportion of women who are traditionally more inclined to part time working. The price of lorry drivers goes up because a cheap source of drivers is affected by Brexit and the failure to keep locally sourced drivers coming forward by failures to keep things operating properly at the DVLA. These are essentially central planning failures that inevitably arise where central planning reigns.
Peter LR
2 years ago
But the differences between now and then may prove significant. The unions are nowhere near as powerful since we off-shored most of our industry. There is a gig economy now which is an incentive for people to keep working rather than strike. Most large economies are printing money due to Covid. And we don’t have a Labour Government. Although at the moment I’m not confident that the present one is that different or more competent.
“And we don’t have a Labour Government. Although at the moment I’m not confident that the present one is that different or more competent.”
They are not more competent. They both are out to some agenda which is antithetical to the well being of the citizens though – so less competent is not an issue, as they are both up to no good.
David Uzzaman
2 years ago
I lived though that period and have my own horror stories which I won’t bore you with. However we have had an equally bad situation for the last decade or so with low inflation and ridiculously low interest rates which have in combination forced up housing costs and kept hugely indebted businesses afloat. A crash landing is inevitable. Nobody learns from history because of the belief that “this time it’s different”.
Saul D
2 years ago
Pressure towards inflation has been building across the western world, not just the UK. Governments have been printing money MMT-style and printing money means inflation. And it will be made worse by the deliberate shuttering of energy supplies in the name of green economics.
At issue is that all money represents debt in labour-value (ie work). The amount of labour value you get depends on amount of work and productivity. To value this you use a token. The token itself is not money, though the debt and the token are commonly perceived as the same (which is closer to being true with a stable currency).
Playing with the value of tokens, changes the worth of previous debts. So if your new token buys less labour-value (inflation), older debts quantified in the same tokens lose out. That is inflation kills savers and pensions. But it also destroys incentives for investment. All exchanges become short-term, panic to panic because inflation makes it stupid to hold cash or savings – everyone will want to hold commodities.
To this we have energy heading for crisis. Poor energy supply kills productivity, and adds supply-based inflation by restricting availability of a basic commodity that feeds into everything. Thus the total amount of labour-value goes down, at the same time the number of tokens are going up.
Like heroin addicts, our governments are ignoring the multiple lessons of the past (1910s, 1920s-30s, 1970s) saying “We can handle it.” Yet, at the same time, printing more and more money for mega-stimulus packages that mostly focus on nice-to-haves, ignoring basic economics.
Nice to see someone with a good understanding of credit theories of money. On the green economics point though, the price of clean energy has been falling rapidly for years. It’s increasingly dirty coal that needs goverment support to compete. And inflation actually incentivises certain forms of investment – it depends on the specifics.
I think it’s because Russia has squeezed gas volumes to Europe, which affects prices everywhere, even though Russia only supplies 1% of UK gas. Possibly, we need more renewables to not rely on gas imports, but it’s bound to be more complicated than that
Because the success of wind and solar relies on rigging the market against gas and coal, and consequently we do not have the necessary reserves to ride through the failures of these clean/green/whatever technologies.
Thus we’re (and I include all of Europe in this, except those countries with overabundant hydro like Norway) vulnerable to a Russian squeeze this year where we wouldn’t have been ten years ago.
Hydro and wind both ‘failed’ in the last year or so. Brazil had to replace its Hydro with LNG as did Portugal, then the failure of wind meant Europe used what should have been its winter reserves to keep the lights on in the summer. Green energy survives on subsidies and the carbon taxation of fossil fuels. It is an insanity that combined with lock-down produced what (as I write 8 months on from this article’s original publication) was predicted – increasingly rapid inflation, probably in reality over 10% in the UK and frighteningly in the Eurozone ranging from France’s claimed 5% (Nuclear Power effect?) to Lithuania’s 20% which is why the ECB has just had a meeting in Frankfurt desperately trying to figure out how to save 19 different economies without trashing Italy and upsetting Germany.
Alan Thorpe
2 years ago
The message is that politicians don’t solve any of our problems. They are the cause of all our problems.
Government-created stagflation, to which the only reaction they can think of is more top-down “priming the economy” and other such nonsense.
Governments don’t run the economy. All they can do is interfere in it, for better or mostly, worse.
This kind of interventionism stifles entrepreneurship and innovation, the very things that can get us out of the mess.
Not to mention the massive gamble on the inefficient energy sources of wind and solar. Funded, as we are slowly beginning to see, by the surpluses created by cheap fossil fuel energy.
William Murphy
2 years ago
Thanks for the trip down memory lane. Yes, I remember 1975. I joined the Civil Service and my point on the salary scale leapt from £2,600 to £3,500. But a one bedroom flat was around £9,000, so the multiple of salary plus eyewatering interest rates would still have been crippling if I had bought a property then. Just wait until the interest rates go up on the £400 billion extra which Boris has borrowed for COVID. And he borrows yet more to pay that interest.
Government borrowing is something I don’t understand, because there isn’t a BIG BANK on Mars to borrow from. (I think it’s more like printing money. Hopefully, someone will step in to explain.)
However, it isn’t free money, and there is interest to pay, so thanks for ruining my weekend 🙂
As a 63 year old who entered the employment market in 1976 at the age of 19 on a very modest trainee’s wage the massive thing to me is that I see no definite parallel between those times and what we are experiencing now. In 1976 there was, at least in my own eyes, nothing amiss and as far as economics are concerned perhaps hard times but “accountable” hard times. Today I see things definitely amiss and madness prevailing with COVID lockdown for a simple moderate flu wrecking the economy all of which challenges my sense of balance and belonging in society which was never my experience back in 1976.
have a read on how international bond, government bond, and our Gilt markets work, their electronic systems, the use of hedging and derivatives.
Always understand that a Government bond is someone elses asset.
They are the backbone of your pension, they are a large part of bank’s assets and life insurance savings.
They also govern interest rates
Rob Britton
2 years ago
Boris Johnson is more of an Edward Heath than a Margaret Thatcher, and I forsee the country going on the same path under Johnson as it did during Heath’s time in office.
AC Harper
2 years ago
I lived through those times, so control of inflation is possible, but not pleasant. And can you see Boris Johnson doing that? Nope. And can you see Keir Starmer doing that? If anything Labour would make things worse.
Jon Hawksley
2 years ago
In the 70’s interest rates went up causing immediate pain to borrowers but it was less than the inflation in house prices so it ended up with a massive shift in wealth from building society savers to home owners. To day interest rates are very low and house prices are very high. Borrowers are going to feel the pain from higher interest rates with a distinct possibility that house prices will not go up and may even go down as new buyers wait.
Last edited 2 years ago by Jon Hawksley
Jacques Rossat
2 years ago
Fantastic and long awaited column which dares to speak the real words. No, this inflation, like the others is not « temporary «, they never are, yes, all the middle and, especially, the lower classes and, especially especially, the retirees will suffer.
I’ve always been pissed off by this stupid mantra of the »nice, moderate 2% inflation », goals of all central banks, the governors of which were in knee-pants when the « real » inflation roared. And the efficient tools to tame it are as inexistent now as they were before.
Mike Doyle
2 years ago
The UK has been undershooting the 2% inflation target for a long time, and the world didn’t collapse. With respect to higher inflation, as Dominic notes, the UK was an outlier in the 1970s. He offers no evidence that we would be an outlier this time. To me this article feels like fearmongering for its own sake.
If only you knew! Where have you been for the last 18 months? Just take the £400 billion plus in one of the comments and figure how that’s going to be paid for? Inflation is the easiest way to manage the payments, and on top of all the other consequences of the pandemic mentioned in the article, everyone is in for a not so perfect storm. I remember 30% inflation when starting my first job in London in 1975 and I asked my new boss for a pay rise after 2 weeks since it had been 6 months since I received the job offer. I also remember my first mortgage in 1984 with an interest rate of 17.5% and that was not even in the UK. Just figure what an interest rate of more than 15% would do for the economy, housing market, massive personal debt and entry into the following depression? Even 5% would be enough to kick that off, and if you think inflation can easily be controlled then compare it to running to try to catch a runaway horse. The article is in fact fairly balanced and so far from fearmongering as is possible.
8 months on as I write, it is clearly a prediction, Cassandra like – ie true but unbelieved at the time.
Mike Bell
2 years ago
Dominic, you seem to have missed out a vital difference between 70s and now – that Gordon Brown gave the Bank of England independence in 1997 to set interest rates and with a mandate to control inflation.
Is that not important?
The age of Showaddywaddy, 10cc and the Bay City Rollers? Yes, yes, the hits just kept coming back then, didn’t they? People didn’t know … what to do! A blockbuster time.
If James Callaghan had decided to emigrate after all, would he have closed his eyes and put a pin on Bay City, Canada, too?
Sweet! Despite the doubts about whether we would ultimately be able to blockbuster out there was still a balance of reasoning as to the outcome. Not so today. Just for luck and just one more in case plus
You kidding!!!!
Last edited 2 years ago by robert stowells
Brooke Walford
2 years ago
The reserve bank in Australia wants to get inflation up. When money is essentially free ie zero base rate, income from savings for retired people is also zero.Maybe these current shortages and other shocks to the global economic system are just what’s needed.
You can emigrate to Europe. You just need a visa, like the millions of Brits who emigrated to Australia, NZ, USA and Canada did. Do you think nobody emigrated to Europe before the EU?
Reading this sort of “analyses” drives home how lucky we are to have Boris at no 10. The essay here is excellent until the last few paragraphs where there’s a strong implication that the ideal policy response is to go in hard & early on income control. Such a policy would be a disaster for the working class, and even many in the struggling middle.
Our current situation is different in many ways to the 70s. As the essay suggests, the forces exerting price pressure are more globalised. Blocking desperately needed pay rises for nurses, service workers and even lower middle class jobs would be causing pain for nothing. (I’d agree with free marketers / inflation hawks that some of the blame for the global supply chain policy can be assigned to excessive monetary policy. Lacking a statesman like Gordon Brown, it’s understandable the worlds policy makers didn’t gauge the fiscal / monetary balance as well as they did for the 2008 crisis.)
Another big difference with the 70s is that back then workers were enjoying a historically high share of the overall economic pie as opposed to capital. After decades of excessively free market policy (even admittedly under Blair) workers, at least the ones without highly marketable skills, are now receiving too little.
I don’t currently have access to the best economic indicators so I’m not sure if the best response to the apparent inflation threat is to do nothing, address supply side factors, introduce limited price controls , or take measure that target wealth & not income other than CGT & perhaps the unconsciously low top rate. But I am confident Boris will know the right thing to do. Whether he can stand firm against pressure from his free market wing is another matter (he didn’t with the NI rise, his personal preference was said to be to raise that revenue in a more progressive fashion). But he does seem to get his way quite often, and at least with Boris in place one knows there is a good chance of the Tories doing the right thing.
I admire your optimism regarding Johnson. Alas, I don’t have any such confidence in his abilities.
In the distant past he may have had courage and intellect (both debatable of course), but over the last year or more he seems to pander to pressure and be more concerned with being liked than doing what is right.
And to compound the problem his new wife seems to have a power over him that has transformed him from a Conservative into being more like a leader of the Green Party.
There’s nothing wrong with having a concern for the environment and putting realistic plans in place (emphasis on the word ‘realistic’), but at this moment in time there are other major issues that desperately need attention, and a focus on the wrong thing right now could destroy this country for many generations to come, maybe beyond repair, and then any environmental goals would become just pipe dreams, which isn’t good for the long term lives of future generations.
In my view there have only been 2 significant political events since Boris took office. One was Brexit which he got done. Halleluiah! The other was COVID. Initially I thought Boris was going to stand firm on a “herd immunity” approach but that quickly imploded to adopting the same approach as pretty much all the governments globally with lockdown and a focus on death. I regard the COVID capitulation to approach as a huge missed opportunity but who knows what pressures he was under and at least he got the major “UK specific” job of Brexit done.
As someone who lived through hyperinflation in Zimbabwe, my observation is that printing money is a viable strategy for power players to remain in power.
Government here has paid for an army it can’t afford, paid for a civil service that is unproductive, and enriched itself indefinitely, all with a printing press that robs ordinary people of their money.
In this game, rich people who already own assets are largely protected because their assets are largely inflation proof.
People running businesses that make essential goods are largely immune because they adjust their prices to hedge against inflation.
The people who lose are the asset-less working and lower middle class. As a teacher in Harare in the 2000s, for example, I watched my salary fall from $150 USD/month to $30 USD/month in the space of 9 months.
During this time, going out for dinner (when you could afford to) required a sports bag full of 100 000 dollar notes, which soon became billion dollar notes, and finally, trillion dollar notes. If I recall correctly, the game ground to a halt only after the release of a 100 trillion dollar note, when members of the army refused to be paid in the currency. Government announced, over night, that USD would be legal tender the following day.
When that happened, I noticed that teachers’ salaries were roughly $1400 USD per month. Assuming that this was the underlying value of a teacher, the money printing in effect robbed $1370 USD from every teacher, every month and stole even more from the minimum wage workers ( whose income went from $8 USD/month to $170 USD/month).
When I see the money printing going on in Britain with no plan to reduce debt, I see the slow and steady creation of Zimbabwe. The strange thing is, many Brits I speak to seem to think there is something “different” about Britain, as though behaving like Zimbabwe will lead to an outcome other than Zimbabwe.
Interesting reflection Hayden.
Earlier in the year I was muttering to myself that you cannot shut down the economy, close down our energy supplies, relying on cucumber juice and sunbeams to heat our homes, print money to pay the grocery bills (Okay call it QE or what ever you want – I don’t care) and expect no adverse consequences. It was the economist’s version of the perpetual motion machine, so beloved of fantasists and charlatans over the centuries. Well none of them work and Boris is toast – unfortunately so am I.
Nothing to worry about as anyone who has been paying attention knows that Klaus Schwab and his ‘friends’ have it all sorted out.
It is called ‘The Great Reset’ and it comes with a catchy slogan that you’ll hear being used by everyone from Johnson to Biden; Build Back Better.
You’ll own nothing, but you’ll be happy 🙂
But don’t mention this to anyone or they’ll call you a conspiracy theorist, even though the WEF and our politicians are all openly talking about it and have been for a long time.
So there’s no need to worry about inflation or a return to the 1970s. Problem solved.
So you take the empty rhetoric of the utterly powerless ‘world economic forum’ talking shop SERIOUSLY?!
Looking at the political headwind of pretty much every major nation one would be naive to not realise the ever increasing influence that organisations such as the WEF, WHO, the IMF and the WBG have on our day to day lives, and our futures. This influence has increased dramatically over the last two years. These organisations are anything but ‘powerless’ and their rhetoric is anything but ’empty’.
When Schwab says “you will own nothing” it is clear he is not including himself and fellow arrogant billionaires who already own pretty much of everything. They intend to own it all and we will be their serfs.
That is the way of the ‘communists’ and always has been. A thin layer of elite overlords and then the rest of the rabble. Pity is that they have a huge chunk of gullible people who think they are leading the world to a more equitable future.
‘ Real ‘ inflation is already well above the official figures and has been for some time. Just look at the petrol, diesel and food price rises over the past few months.
We had strong Unions in the UK during the 1970’s. Other than a couple of notable exceptions, we do not have strong Unions now so workers will not be able to achieve inflationary pay rises.
Interest rates will not rise appreciably as that would put people out of their homes on to the streets and that will not be allowed to happen in this day and age. The Government will intervene as people now expect it to. We no longer live in a society where if things go wrong, the individual is responsible for themselves and are left to get on with it. The all embracing nanny State will provide.
I do not know what the answer is and I suspect that our leaders do not know either. They will bumble along and throw even more ‘ free ‘ money at the problem I suspect and people will get poorer.
As the author of the article knows, some historical knowledge is necessary in order to navigate the present. I am 51 years of age so was of primary school age during the 1970’s but I remember trash being piled up in the streets. Talking to people who went through those times as adults has always been useful. My parents were very close to handing the house keys back to the bank manager seemingly and making ends meet was extremely difficult.
The causes of the present inflationary pressures are numerous but the common denominator is the handling of the pandemic in my opinion. Shutting down the economy was never going to end well but not enough people thought beyond the panic and raised concerns about what was happening. With pretty much the entire population focussed on saving lives instead of stepping back and looking at the bigger picture, they were blind to both the obvious and less obvious consequences of such flawed thinking.
You reap what you sow. Get on with it.
It would be interesting to know if countries that didn’t shut down their economies as much suffer less from inflation
Perhaps a look at how Sweden is doing? The MSM won’t of course, because Sweden was an outlier when the group think of every other country was to impose lockdowns.
The latest forecast show, predictably, that Sweden is outperforming most of its EU peers in terms of real GDP growth, with inflation forecast to remain below the EU average.
Of course, Sweden was not entirely insulated from the effects of lockdown – as a very open and relatively small economy, it was dependent on trade with locked down partners.
“With pretty much the entire population focussed on saving lives instead of stepping back and looking at the bigger picture,”
The covid response was never about saving lives. And it did not either.
It is typical of Johnson’s irresponsible fatuity and indolence that he should have let this happen. One might describe him as a bull in an economic china shop, except that he’s more like a cowardly elephant, so terrified of confronting the mouse called “fiscal laxity” that he charges in any direction to avoid it, doing much damage of his own in the process. Meanwhile the rodent grows and proliferates into the gnawing rats of inflation.
They say power corrupts. How true! But it also exposes. It exposes the flaws and qualities of whoever wields it. Johnson is now under the pitiless spotlight of history and will one day stand revealed as the most spineless, over promoted, under qualified coward ever to have squeezed his rump onto the prime ministerial chair. Such characters are themselves a sign of cultural morbidity and they serve as the chaotic prelude to even worse.
Very well said
If politics descends into a shouting-match of abuse, we will end up like the USA where no consensus can develop. Please use argument, not abusive language.
There is argument. I am not to blame if you ignore or fail to notice it; nor will I stoop to repeating myself. The points are there and if you are fair minded you will try to take them in. And the language is not “abusive”. It may be insulting, but insults, couched in decorous, formal language, are the conventional and deserved punishment of the deceitful, the treacherous, the fatuous and the weak – ie, Johnson.
There is a continuity and it is ridiculous to blame Boris for trends of many years. Boris got Brexit done and if he does nothing else deserves huge credit for respecting the democratic vote of 2016 when so many lunatics were screaming for the undemocratic rejection of Brexit and shamefully voted accordingly. In the last election there was only one issue and that was “democracy” and only one person standing for it and that was “Boris”.
That’s fine Robert if you believe the 2016 was a fair vote. Sadly there’s a mountain of evidence to show a load of dirty tricks & law breaking. A fair few of those involved are in various roles in Johnston’s government.
Getting Brexit done will prove his undoing.
At a time when the U.K. needed parters most it’s torched most of those relationships
No other leader in Europe or the G7 has any respect for Johnston
Dunno about that, but I’m pretty sure they know his name is Johnson.
One person? So he was impersonating Gove and Farage and Hannan and Teresa Villiers, was he? Second, whilst a man may well be praised for some fine particular action or intervention, this does not give him carte blanche to do as he pleases, without criticism, thereafter. One lonely courageous stand for Brexit does not compensate for a flock of failures, collapses, U-turns, derelictions and disappointments since. Johnson and Gove were right about two things in 16: leaving the EU and Johnson’s unfitness for high office.
mmmm, maybe ‘get brexit done’ was merely his ticket to have a nice office in 10 downing street whether he thought it was right or not…
In a global market place the market price of work can become locally disrupted if there is a sudden squeeze on supply. So gas shoots up in price as alternative energy sources are squeezed. The price of GPs go up because we have failed to train enough in the UK and the problem is exacerbated because they then become so well paid their logical course is to restrict their time working- a propensity increased by having trained a high proportion of women who are traditionally more inclined to part time working. The price of lorry drivers goes up because a cheap source of drivers is affected by Brexit and the failure to keep locally sourced drivers coming forward by failures to keep things operating properly at the DVLA. These are essentially central planning failures that inevitably arise where central planning reigns.
But the differences between now and then may prove significant. The unions are nowhere near as powerful since we off-shored most of our industry. There is a gig economy now which is an incentive for people to keep working rather than strike. Most large economies are printing money due to Covid. And we don’t have a Labour Government. Although at the moment I’m not confident that the present one is that different or more competent.
No, they’re printing money due to debt.
Jeffrey, is that not because of the debt incurred covering Covid measures?
“And we don’t have a Labour Government. Although at the moment I’m not confident that the present one is that different or more competent.”
They are not more competent. They both are out to some agenda which is antithetical to the well being of the citizens though – so less competent is not an issue, as they are both up to no good.
I lived though that period and have my own horror stories which I won’t bore you with. However we have had an equally bad situation for the last decade or so with low inflation and ridiculously low interest rates which have in combination forced up housing costs and kept hugely indebted businesses afloat. A crash landing is inevitable. Nobody learns from history because of the belief that “this time it’s different”.
Pressure towards inflation has been building across the western world, not just the UK. Governments have been printing money MMT-style and printing money means inflation. And it will be made worse by the deliberate shuttering of energy supplies in the name of green economics.
At issue is that all money represents debt in labour-value (ie work). The amount of labour value you get depends on amount of work and productivity. To value this you use a token. The token itself is not money, though the debt and the token are commonly perceived as the same (which is closer to being true with a stable currency).
Playing with the value of tokens, changes the worth of previous debts. So if your new token buys less labour-value (inflation), older debts quantified in the same tokens lose out. That is inflation kills savers and pensions. But it also destroys incentives for investment. All exchanges become short-term, panic to panic because inflation makes it stupid to hold cash or savings – everyone will want to hold commodities.
To this we have energy heading for crisis. Poor energy supply kills productivity, and adds supply-based inflation by restricting availability of a basic commodity that feeds into everything. Thus the total amount of labour-value goes down, at the same time the number of tokens are going up.
Like heroin addicts, our governments are ignoring the multiple lessons of the past (1910s, 1920s-30s, 1970s) saying “We can handle it.” Yet, at the same time, printing more and more money for mega-stimulus packages that mostly focus on nice-to-haves, ignoring basic economics.
Nice to see someone with a good understanding of credit theories of money. On the green economics point though, the price of clean energy has been falling rapidly for years. It’s increasingly dirty coal that needs goverment support to compete. And inflation actually incentivises certain forms of investment – it depends on the specifics.
If clean energy is cheaper, why are energy prices going up? With all this investment in renewables, energy prices should be falling…
I think it’s because Russia has squeezed gas volumes to Europe, which affects prices everywhere, even though Russia only supplies 1% of UK gas. Possibly, we need more renewables to not rely on gas imports, but it’s bound to be more complicated than that
Because the success of wind and solar relies on rigging the market against gas and coal, and consequently we do not have the necessary reserves to ride through the failures of these clean/green/whatever technologies.
Thus we’re (and I include all of Europe in this, except those countries with overabundant hydro like Norway) vulnerable to a Russian squeeze this year where we wouldn’t have been ten years ago.
Hydro and wind both ‘failed’ in the last year or so. Brazil had to replace its Hydro with LNG as did Portugal, then the failure of wind meant Europe used what should have been its winter reserves to keep the lights on in the summer. Green energy survives on subsidies and the carbon taxation of fossil fuels. It is an insanity that combined with lock-down produced what (as I write 8 months on from this article’s original publication) was predicted – increasingly rapid inflation, probably in reality over 10% in the UK and frighteningly in the Eurozone ranging from France’s claimed 5% (Nuclear Power effect?) to Lithuania’s 20% which is why the ECB has just had a meeting in Frankfurt desperately trying to figure out how to save 19 different economies without trashing Italy and upsetting Germany.
The message is that politicians don’t solve any of our problems. They are the cause of all our problems.
In this case, politicians + bankers + academics.
Don’t forget the meeja
It already feels like the seventies.
Government-created stagflation, to which the only reaction they can think of is more top-down “priming the economy” and other such nonsense.
Governments don’t run the economy. All they can do is interfere in it, for better or mostly, worse.
This kind of interventionism stifles entrepreneurship and innovation, the very things that can get us out of the mess.
Not to mention the massive gamble on the inefficient energy sources of wind and solar. Funded, as we are slowly beginning to see, by the surpluses created by cheap fossil fuel energy.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane. Yes, I remember 1975. I joined the Civil Service and my point on the salary scale leapt from £2,600 to £3,500. But a one bedroom flat was around £9,000, so the multiple of salary plus eyewatering interest rates would still have been crippling if I had bought a property then. Just wait until the interest rates go up on the £400 billion extra which Boris has borrowed for COVID. And he borrows yet more to pay that interest.
Government borrowing is something I don’t understand, because there isn’t a BIG BANK on Mars to borrow from. (I think it’s more like printing money. Hopefully, someone will step in to explain.)
However, it isn’t free money, and there is interest to pay, so thanks for ruining my weekend 🙂
Saul D said further down “printing money means inflation”. Maybe I need to study economics
As a 63 year old who entered the employment market in 1976 at the age of 19 on a very modest trainee’s wage the massive thing to me is that I see no definite parallel between those times and what we are experiencing now. In 1976 there was, at least in my own eyes, nothing amiss and as far as economics are concerned perhaps hard times but “accountable” hard times. Today I see things definitely amiss and madness prevailing with COVID lockdown for a simple moderate flu wrecking the economy all of which challenges my sense of balance and belonging in society which was never my experience back in 1976.
have a read on how international bond, government bond, and our Gilt markets work, their electronic systems, the use of hedging and derivatives.
Always understand that a Government bond is someone elses asset.
They are the backbone of your pension, they are a large part of bank’s assets and life insurance savings.
They also govern interest rates
Boris Johnson is more of an Edward Heath than a Margaret Thatcher, and I forsee the country going on the same path under Johnson as it did during Heath’s time in office.
I lived through those times, so control of inflation is possible, but not pleasant.
And can you see Boris Johnson doing that? Nope.
And can you see Keir Starmer doing that? If anything Labour would make things worse.
In the 70’s interest rates went up causing immediate pain to borrowers but it was less than the inflation in house prices so it ended up with a massive shift in wealth from building society savers to home owners. To day interest rates are very low and house prices are very high. Borrowers are going to feel the pain from higher interest rates with a distinct possibility that house prices will not go up and may even go down as new buyers wait.
Fantastic and long awaited column which dares to speak the real words. No, this inflation, like the others is not « temporary «, they never are, yes, all the middle and, especially, the lower classes and, especially especially, the retirees will suffer.
I’ve always been pissed off by this stupid mantra of the »nice, moderate 2% inflation », goals of all central banks, the governors of which were in knee-pants when the « real » inflation roared. And the efficient tools to tame it are as inexistent now as they were before.
The UK has been undershooting the 2% inflation target for a long time, and the world didn’t collapse. With respect to higher inflation, as Dominic notes, the UK was an outlier in the 1970s. He offers no evidence that we would be an outlier this time. To me this article feels like fearmongering for its own sake.
If only you knew! Where have you been for the last 18 months? Just take the £400 billion plus in one of the comments and figure how that’s going to be paid for? Inflation is the easiest way to manage the payments, and on top of all the other consequences of the pandemic mentioned in the article, everyone is in for a not so perfect storm. I remember 30% inflation when starting my first job in London in 1975 and I asked my new boss for a pay rise after 2 weeks since it had been 6 months since I received the job offer. I also remember my first mortgage in 1984 with an interest rate of 17.5% and that was not even in the UK. Just figure what an interest rate of more than 15% would do for the economy, housing market, massive personal debt and entry into the following depression? Even 5% would be enough to kick that off, and if you think inflation can easily be controlled then compare it to running to try to catch a runaway horse. The article is in fact fairly balanced and so far from fearmongering as is possible.
8 months on as I write, it is clearly a prediction, Cassandra like – ie true but unbelieved at the time.
Dominic, you seem to have missed out a vital difference between 70s and now – that Gordon Brown gave the Bank of England independence in 1997 to set interest rates and with a mandate to control inflation.
Is that not important?
Only in terms of public relations.
The age of Showaddywaddy, 10cc and the Bay City Rollers? Yes, yes, the hits just kept coming back then, didn’t they? People didn’t know … what to do! A blockbuster time.
If James Callaghan had decided to emigrate after all, would he have closed his eyes and put a pin on Bay City, Canada, too?
Sweet! Despite the doubts about whether we would ultimately be able to blockbuster out there was still a balance of reasoning as to the outcome. Not so today.
Just for luck
and just one more in case
plus
You kidding!!!!
The reserve bank in Australia wants to get inflation up. When money is essentially free ie zero base rate, income from savings for retired people is also zero.Maybe these current shortages and other shocks to the global economic system are just what’s needed.
Sure it’s what’s needed but won’t be without pain and nobody in power wants to grasp the nettle.
This inflation is temporary. It’s not the 70s.
A wee bit premature Dominic, and you’re as bad as the MSM media scaremongering about petrol, drivers and turkeys.
At least in the 1970s we had the freedom to emigrate to Europe and get a job there. Even if we had to make do with a Sealink ferry.
Can you not emigrate to Europe now?
You can emigrate to Europe. You just need a visa, like the millions of Brits who emigrated to Australia, NZ, USA and Canada did. Do you think nobody emigrated to Europe before the EU?
And you can still go by Chunnel, which was set up by the bilateral Canterbury Treaty between UK and France many years before Maastricht and the EU.https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Canterbury_(1986)
Reading this sort of “analyses” drives home how lucky we are to have Boris at no 10. The essay here is excellent until the last few paragraphs where there’s a strong implication that the ideal policy response is to go in hard & early on income control. Such a policy would be a disaster for the working class, and even many in the struggling middle.
Our current situation is different in many ways to the 70s. As the essay suggests, the forces exerting price pressure are more globalised. Blocking desperately needed pay rises for nurses, service workers and even lower middle class jobs would be causing pain for nothing. (I’d agree with free marketers / inflation hawks that some of the blame for the global supply chain policy can be assigned to excessive monetary policy. Lacking a statesman like Gordon Brown, it’s understandable the worlds policy makers didn’t gauge the fiscal / monetary balance as well as they did for the 2008 crisis.)
Another big difference with the 70s is that back then workers were enjoying a historically high share of the overall economic pie as opposed to capital. After decades of excessively free market policy (even admittedly under Blair) workers, at least the ones without highly marketable skills, are now receiving too little.
I don’t currently have access to the best economic indicators so I’m not sure if the best response to the apparent inflation threat is to do nothing, address supply side factors, introduce limited price controls , or take measure that target wealth & not income other than CGT & perhaps the unconsciously low top rate. But I am confident Boris will know the right thing to do. Whether he can stand firm against pressure from his free market wing is another matter (he didn’t with the NI rise, his personal preference was said to be to raise that revenue in a more progressive fashion). But he does seem to get his way quite often, and at least with Boris in place one knows there is a good chance of the Tories doing the right thing.
I admire your optimism regarding Johnson. Alas, I don’t have any such confidence in his abilities.
In the distant past he may have had courage and intellect (both debatable of course), but over the last year or more he seems to pander to pressure and be more concerned with being liked than doing what is right.
And to compound the problem his new wife seems to have a power over him that has transformed him from a Conservative into being more like a leader of the Green Party.
There’s nothing wrong with having a concern for the environment and putting realistic plans in place (emphasis on the word ‘realistic’), but at this moment in time there are other major issues that desperately need attention, and a focus on the wrong thing right now could destroy this country for many generations to come, maybe beyond repair, and then any environmental goals would become just pipe dreams, which isn’t good for the long term lives of future generations.
The Green Party believes in EU free movement. It is not racist.
In my view there have only been 2 significant political events since Boris took office. One was Brexit which he got done. Halleluiah! The other was COVID. Initially I thought Boris was going to stand firm on a “herd immunity” approach but that quickly imploded to adopting the same approach as pretty much all the governments globally with lockdown and a focus on death. I regard the COVID capitulation to approach as a huge missed opportunity but who knows what pressures he was under and at least he got the major “UK specific” job of Brexit done.