Knave or Fool?

WATERFORD, Ireland – Markets were calm on Monday. Investors wanted to panic, as usual, but didn’t know what direction to take.

We’re not sure either. On the one hand, the world economy is slowing down. On the other, Mario Draghi has announced again that he – not willing buyers and sellers – will determine consumer prices.

Mario Draghi, the monetary crank currently heading the ECB. We are not dispensing this insult (or let us better say: this objective description) of the man willy-nilly. The hoary inflationism he propagates was unmasked as the hallmark of monetary crankery more than a century ago already. Somehow it has become the “economic orthodoxy” of the centrally planned fiat money system and the welfare states that are hosting it.

Photo credit: Picture Alliance / DPA

And he wants to see them go higher. No kidding. Bloomberg:

“European Central Bank President Mario Draghi set the scene for further stimulus in two weeks’ time, saying the institution will do what’s necessary to reach its inflation goal rapidly. The euro fell.

‘If we decide that the current trajectory of our policy is not sufficient to achieve that objective, we will do what we must to raise inflation as quickly as possible,’ Draghi said in a speech in Frankfurt on Friday.”

Finally, the purchasing power of the euro actually appears to be stable. According to Mr. Draghi and his fellowbien pensants at the ECB, this is absolutely terrible and needs to be corrected by creating even more money from thin ai

The lesson of the last few years is that central banks are hell on an economy, but they’re heaven to stock market investors. What will happen next? We wait to find out.

The lunacy of Draghi and his fellow planners properly visualized. This is the bulk of the euro area’s true money supply (a few items such as foreign resident deposits are excluded). It has grown by more than 74% since January 2008, and lately it has begun to “go parabolic”, growing by nearly 14% per year