Now it’s official: In November, German consumer prices rose by 5.2 percent, the highest increase since 1992. The ECB meets on Thursday. You must finally react now, says Merkur editor-in-chief Georg Anastasiadis.
The coronavirus makes you sick, inflation “only” poor. Of course, this is no consolation, but it does explain why the German debate is currently almost without exception revolving around the pandemic, although inflation has now reached a pace that has not been known for generations: consumer prices rose by 5.2 percent in November compared to the previous year. This has not existed in Germany, which is obsessed with stability, for almost 30 years. And yet it remains strangely silent.
It can and must not stay that way. The new Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner rightly calls the out-of-control inflation an “impoverishment program for people without high real assets”. Low-wage earners and pensioners in particular, who spend a large part of their income on food, which is particularly hard hit by the rise in prices, such as gas and electricity, are hit by the high prices. In contrast, the owners of stocks and real estate are happy. Inflation is deeply anti-social.
So far, the European Central Bank (ECB) and its French boss Christine Lagarde have been completely unaffected. While the US Federal Reserve recently admitted that inflation is no longer just “temporary”, the European money guards always have the same story about the “temporary” price increase as a result of the disrupted supply chains after Corona: an excuse for doing nothing. The moment of truth will strike for the ECB next Thursday. Then the Central Bank Council meets to discuss the future of monetary policy. If you let her, Ms. Lagarde would like to pump even more cheap money inflating prices into the markets with a view to the weaker EU countries. That can no longer be left without a clear answer from Germany.
#excuses #Lagarde