Sunday, January 1, 2023

Beyond Hubris – European Bank President Lagarde Says Policy Efforts Must Be Taken to Stop Wage Growth


The ideology of these elitist minded control officers is really remarkable.  The president of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, has given several statements to media saying policy measures must be put into place in order to stop wage growth from fueling inflation.

Think about this in the most practical of terms.  Western politicians have created massive inflation through their collective ‘Build Back Better’ energy policy.  The central banks have raised interest rates, an effort to shrink the economy by lowering energy demand, to offset the skyrocketing costs of the energy problem the politicians created.

With workers demanding pay raises to help afford the skyrocketing costs of energy, the central EU bank is now worried that wage increases will fuel inflation.

There’s a truckload of pretending needed to avoid seeing the insufferable dynamic of reality.

Political policy drives up energy costs. Central banks try to drive down energy demand.  Workers unable to afford the energy prices created by politicians, are then blamed for the inflation the political policy creates.

Sooner or later ordinary people are going to figure out this abusive cycle.

(Via Reuters) – Euro zone wages are growing quicker than earlier thought and the European Central Bank must prevent this from adding to already high inflation, ECB President Christine Lagarde told a Croatian newspaper.

The ECB has raised interest rates by a total of 2.5 percentage points since July in a bid to arrest a historic surge in inflation and has promised even more policy tightening over its next several meetings as longer-term price growth expectations have started moving above its 2% target.

“We know wages are increasing, probably at a faster pace than expected,” Croatian newspaper Jutarnji list quoted Lagarde as saying on Saturday. “We must not allow inflationary expectations to become de-anchored or wages to have an inflationary effect.”

[…] Lagarde added that the bloc’s expected winter recession, induced by soaring energy costs, is likely to be short and shallow, provided there are no additional shocks. (read more)

That last line is just beyond infuriating.

This era of economic pretending, and the disconnect in the mindset of the self-proclaimed elitist rulers, is just jaw dropping in scale and scope.