Pepe
Full Member
Lost in all the chatter about inflation is the fact that the US reduced child poverty by approximately 16% last year.
Not much use if you can't find formula to feed your baby.
Lost in all the chatter about inflation is the fact that the US reduced child poverty by approximately 16% last year.
Tell us why there’s a formula shortage. We’ll wait.Not much use if you can't find formula to feed your baby.
I really think they're being too slow to act and running some fairly serious inflation risks3 rate hikes to come this year, with more to follow: ECB official
Austria’s Robert Holzmann sees growth slowing, but no outright recession.www.politico.eu
I take it you got that from The Financial Times, it might as well be written in Arabic as far as the typical Brexitter is concerned as all those big fancy words and meanings would have them all confused, I just like the way the author said " Brexit wot done it. "FT 16-05-22 Adam Posen.
Brexit reality bites as stagflation looms Bank of England will have to raise rates higher than it has forecast and even more than markets have priced in
The UK outlook for stagflation of rising prices and slowing economic growth this year and next reflects the realities that Brexit has wrought. Of course, the Covid pandemic, the difficulties of reopening the economy, and now energy and food price surges are not caused by Brexit. But the UK’s vulnerability to those shocks, and therefore the amplification of their inflation impact, is largely due to Britain’s departure from the EU. This is why the Bank of England will end up having to raise interest rates over the next year more than it forecast this month, and even more than markets have already priced in. Given the very hard Brexit, the Bank of England and the UK economy have been dragged part way back to the 1970s. By that, the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee is no longer able to look past external economic shocks as they did during the 1992 European Exchange Rate Mechanism exit or 2009 sterling depreciation. In these cases, they had the luxury of setting monetary policy solely in terms of hard domestic forecast data. But after Brexit, the MPC would have to worry more about the “spillover” of international events into inflation expectations. This is due to a combination of the UK being a smaller economy on its own, less buffered by its integration in the EU, and an erosion of trust in UK governments to run disciplined economic policies. Hence, any shocks are likely to result in higher and more lasting inflation than they did before Brexit. Additionally, because the UK has waged a trade war on itself, Brexit has a direct effect on inflation. There is a down shift in purchasing power — a one-time but significant move that is taking some years to play out as various aspects are implemented. This takes the form of administrative costs and regulatory barriers as well as tariffs and diminished policy choices. There also has been a reduction in both the level of labour supply and its elasticity with the effective exclusion of European migrant workers. Labour is a differentiated good with no simple substitution when workers in a given industry, skill set or region are no longer available. Critically, this has meant a growing mismatch of available workers to jobs, as well as the perceived bargaining power of domestic workers in certain sectors. The UK avoided the US’s 2021 mistake of distributing too much fiscal stimulus in too brief a period when the economy was recovering but short of labour; if anything, fiscal policy was too austere. The UK, like the EU, also avoided Washington’s error in tying Covid aid to workers laid off or fired, by instead subsidising jobs and furlough schemes. Yet, the UK inflation rate is high, similar to US levels, and has been for some time. It is higher than the rate for the eurozone, even though price rises accelerated across the bloc predominantly as a result of Russia’s war in Ukraine. It is Brexit wot done it. Because of the limitations of today’s UK labour market, the British economy faces much the same worker shortages and wage pressures as the US. UK price rises reflect, in part, the idiosyncrasies of Britain’s natural gas and food markets. However, the lack of sourcing supply options for agricultural labour and fuel made those inflationary effects worse and more persistent. Implementing trade barriers and new standards between the UK and the EU single market only compound the problem. I do not share the MPC’s assessment that the forecast decline in real incomes and the planned monetary tightening will be sufficient to bring inflation back to target within two to three years. Monetary policy has to be exercised because in a small closing economy with an inflationary trend — similar to Britain in the 1970s — inflation does not self-correct with general movements in demand. Wage increases are not keeping up with inflation but this is precisely why monetary policy has to tighten further now, not wait. Preserving the real income for working households is exactly why the Bank should be fulfilling its mandate to maintain stable prices around the 2 per cent target.
While there is pent up demand for some goods or services I think the problem is more on the supply side.The UK had a 1% drop in labour force participation, but that was 2020-2021, 2021-2022 is broadly static and it's not as low as it was in 2018, so I'm not convinced there's a huge impact on inflation there: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/labor-force-participation-rate#:~:text=Labor Force Participation Rate in the United Kingdom averaged 76.78,percent in March of 1983.
Certainly labour force size post brexit would significantly overwhelm that.
It dropped in the US during Covid but has rebounded strongly: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/labor-force-participation-rate
Ireland has a higher Labour Force Participation rate vs pre Covid: https://tradingeconomics.com/ireland/labor-force-participation-rate#:~:text=Labor Force Participation Rate in Ireland averaged 62.73 percent from,the second quarter of 2020.
Yes, the migration would be a factor, but it'd be inflationary in some countries, deflationary in others, e.g. the UK losing all of those Polish truck drivers to other locations would mean a deflationary wage pressure in the receiving countries.
Your point about pent up demand is exactly my point, the velocity rate has changed. You increase the velocity with an elevated money supply = inflation + GDP growth, but GDP growth is slowing.
As for Russia-Ukraine, I get that has an impact, but you have the combination of the velocity and activity catching up, raising the relative prices significantly, but we had oil prices higher than current rates (and significantly higher adjusted for inflation) from 2011-2014 without the massive rises in inflation.
Additionally, the inflation pre-dates the Ukraine war, so while it might be making it worse, I really can't see it as a root cause.
Paywalled but I agree a recession is probably coming in some advanced economies
Thank you for your contributionI love it when the biggest doleheads on the Proc pretend to be economic whizz kids who know the next move the ECB are going to make even before Christine Lagarde does.
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