ISMAIL LAGARDIEN: Slinking deeper into inflation after a cascade of crises
The 2008 financial crisis pointed to the need to reform the architecture of global finance
As the world slinks deeper into inflation there is the customary search for causes and, of course, a scramble to apportion blame. Somewhat predictably, there is the tendency to look at more immediate empirically verifiable events or states of affairs — which is not entirely misplaced given the ahistoricity of orthodox economics. Hidden in the toolbox of instruments and methods are the historical origins and enduring continuities of political power plays.
In more immediate terms the causes of the current surge of inflation may be any combination of central banks feeding money into financial systems, the transnational fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — which ripped large chunks of gas, grains, oil and fertiliser from global supplies — China’s prepandemic disruption of global supply chains, the pandemic itself, and a prepandemic austerity by stealth marked by fiscal largesse to the wealthy, mainly to banks...
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