Inflation

I've noticed in last few days,

Previously cheap food options have risen sharply.

Example, Wetherspoons. It's gone way higher for a meal.. 12 /13 euro.

Tesco - frozen food, spiked higher by double digit %

These are rises that affect lower income people greater.

Pretty obvious article here from RTE this morning about savings being eroded by inflation. You'd be mad now just to have savings sitting somewhere not doing some work for you.

However, the cynic in me sees this as a push to get spending all those pandemic savings that supposedly built up to help an economy that's heading into turbulent waters.

A gastropub I used to like to go to every so often has released a new summer menu, it's the very same as their old menu but with prices increased quite a bit. A 10oz sirloin is now 30 euro in a pretty rural pub. That is just not good value for money any longer so end result is I won't be going there.

no conspiracy here, this is what happens when you create highly complex global supply chains under just in time philosophies, and when major disruptions occur, kaboom!

IMF suggested that we should see it fall back to under 3% next year but will remain high this year. This is not a massive problem for richer counties but will be for the less well off in them and of course for other much poorer countries. IMO severe food inflation could be the biggest issues of these next 6-9 months.

I was shocked to see burger meal for EUR 15.

This seems to be the norm, even in rural towns.

Now I'm seeing EUR 18 prices, and you don't even get a plate.... It's served on a plank of wood.

At what point do enough consumers put their hands up, saying, I'm out.

....the imf, an institution thats rarely wrong!

state power and control has in fact been significantly reduced in recent times, and has been continually handed to major sectors, in particular the fire sectors(finance, insurance and real estate), but most particularly towards finance, and in turn has financialised our economies, most noticeably in our property markets, hence that train wreck! most debt is in fact credit based, which primarily comes from the finance sector itself, this has become our major problem, as the main institutions that we created to manage the money supply, i.e. central banks, have very little power and control, particularly in relation to which is now a rare phenomenon, i.e. inflation.....

tis rare that large corporations wouldnt be coining it!

Think I may cut more notch holes in my belt cause shes down to last one.

so in order to protect the economy, and its needs, maybe we should have sacrificed some humans?

no we dont, central banks can never run out of money, crack on with it folks, plough money across the planet, we ve serious sh1t to be sorting, and we need money to do it!

...and again, this bollcoks! zimbabwean inflation was due to a combination of factors, the fact that they were unable to provide themselves with their food needs, and required foreign denominated reserves, primarily dollars, in order to trade for this critical need. the majority of irish debt is in euros, so different different! we clearly need to ramp up the building of property, our health system is virtually collapsing, and rapidly increasing the changeover of our power network to alternatives, is all probably a good idea, and funnily enough, a sh1t load of money is required for all of that, so if you dont want your taxes to significantly increase to do so, the only other option is rapid expansion of the public money supply, i.e. borrowing!

Every episode of inflation has its particular characteristics but always and everywhere it is caused when money creation is faster than the growth in output. Zimbabwe is an extreme example but you are taking an extreme position I.e. no limit to money printing.

You may not remember the misery of stagflation in the 1970s. It took Reagan/Thatcher to sort that out.

Ireland made such a hash of monetary policy whenever we had some control over it that we should be glad that we have the Euro but the ECB has not performed well in its 20+ years of operation. It bears a lot of responsibility for the Euro Area crisis and it has continued with QE even when it became clear that the European economy was doing OK during the pandemic.

Will the ECB bring inflation down to 2% in the near future i.e. will it do its job?

I seriously doubt it. Monetary and fiscal policy is the Euro area would have to reverse gears rapidly and I see no political will in Frankfurt, Berlin, Paris or Rome (yeah, I’m looking at you, Mario!)

So, inflation will rob Irish workers of purchasing power, except those with political or economic leverage (nurses, teachers, Gardai, construction, ICT, finance). If inflation continues on its current trend, wages will need to increase by around 30% over five years just to keep the same purchasing power. If we get 1970s inflation, 30% every two years would be needed.

So you still want the ECB to print those Euros?

Inflation is due to supply chain crisis, cost of materials and transporting goods has gone up, Ireland is a tiny country, its a global problem, also interest rates going up will effect all company's, nothing to do with lock down in Ireland, well we had it good last decade, low inflation, low interest rates,

rising energy costs effect all company's that produce food, bakerys, basic items etc most items, food, clothes things we buy every week are imported. I think most grocery items will go up by 20 per cent at least.

Who would have thought printing all that money during Covid would lead to inflation?

Who would have thought adding €50bn to our debt and becoming one of the most indebted countries on the planet would be an issue when inflation kicked in?

I mean the whole thing is very surprising and couldn't possibly have been foreseen by anyone with an ounce of intelligence.

Oh well, just one of those things I guess.

At least we managed to get a decent 2 years of Covid-theater under our belts.

Clap for our heroes.

I cracked quikpark years ago. DOnt book until the day before you travel. Then its €5 a day still. Thats during the summer at least.