StatCounter

Friday 21 January 2011

Are you ready for high inflation?

Bert Flossbach, an asset manager in Cologne, is:
'Flossbach is convinced that the euro will also degenerate into a soft currency. The enormous debts facing some euro-zone governments, he says, make it inevitable. Flossbach expects galloping, double-digit inflation -- and not in five or 10 years, but soon. The only missing ingredient, he says, is a trigger, a dramatic event that will put an "avalanche-like process" in motion.

...

Polls show that the majority of Germans, and especially older ones, have grown worried about their savings. Many are scared that inflation will consume their nest eggs, and that they will end up footing the bill for bailing out banks and entire countries. "The large figures have really alarmed people," says Manfred Neumann, a currency specialist in Bonn.

To avert economic collapse in the wake of the financial crisis, central banks have been pumping more and more money into the economy. In doing so, economists say, they have created the fertile ground on which inflation can now thrive.

Some politicians are also sounding the alarm. Frank Schäffler, a financial expert with Germany's business-friendly Free Democratic Party (FDP), notes how the European Central Bank (ECB) has been financing government debt by printing money. "In the medium term," he says, "this inevitably leads to inflation." Michael Fuchs, an economic expert with Chancellor Angela Merkel's center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), is particularly worried about commodities prices, saying that they contribute to "the greatest inflation risk."'

Read more at Der Spiegel and be prepared to worry about the coming inflationary storm.

1 comment:

Grant said...

It is all so boringly predictable. Will Germany be the first to leave the Euro ?
If I were German, I would want out asap.