Bust out your bellbottoms and dust off your platform shoes: yet another Carter-esque consequence of horrible globo-socialist policies is rearing its miserable head. The World Bank Organization (WBO) has just issued an economic report with the headline, “Stagflation Risk Rises Amid Sharp Slowdown in Growth.”
In his forward to the report, WBO president David Malpass sounds the alarm. “Just over two years after COVID-19 caused the deepest global recession since World War II, the world economy is again in danger,” he warns. “This time it is facing high inflation and slow growth at the same time. Even if a global recession is averted, the pain of stagflation could persist for several years—unless major supply increases are set in motion.”
Citing the war in Ukraine, inflation, and climbing interest rates, Malpass predicts that 2022 will be a low-growth year worldwide. “Several years of above-average inflation and below-average growth are now likely, with potentially destabilizing consequences for low- and middle-income economies,” he writes, before noting that “It’s a phenomenon—stagflation—that the world has not seen since the 1970s.”
Related: Bidenomics: Gas Prices Surge to Another Record, No Relief in Sight
“Elections have consequences,” Barack Obama famously observed back in 2008. The consequences of the controversial mail-in election of 2020 have been ruinous. Every single one of the causes for the crummy economy Malpass cited can be traced directly to the Biden Collective’s policies.
Russia invaded Ukraine? Chalk that up to a senescent leader of the free world who broadcasts weakness and is also likely ethically compromised and perhaps even blackmailable. (Sure do wish the media and the DOJ had taken that laptop seriously. I’m not sure what we’re even keeping them around for at this point.) If I wanted to invade somewhere, I would do it on Biden’s watch, too.
Inflation? That’s what you get when you dump trillions of dollars into the economy you shut down. And the climbing interest rates that follow as predictably as night follows day are a wet blanket on economies that try to roar back. (Yes, yes, technically the economy first shut down on Trump’s watch; he was listening to the globalist crowd when he made that decision, yet from day one, the Biden Collective has perpetuated shutdowns, bans, and mandates to the best of its ability.)
Malpass acknowledges that the awful conditions produced by the goofing around of developed countries will hit poorer nations the hardest. (And if you want a real sobering look at what that will mean, read Leftists Are About to Kill Millions of People Right Before Our Eyes by Kurt Schlichter at our sister site, Townhall.) Then the WBO president goes on to list five key efforts on which the world’s policymakers must focus. These recommendations range from the merely ineffective to the sort of thing that only an Ivy-educated globo-socialist could come up with, and which will actually rev up the root causes of the economic malaise, guaranteeing even worse conditions for a longer amount of time.
The first effort WBO recommends is coordination of relief efforts to Ukraine. While that’s very nice, it’s also completely useless: the poor economic conditions won’t improve until the fighting stops. Blankets and shelters will do nothing to stabilize the region. And WBO’s fourth recommendation — “expanding vaccination coverage in low-income countries, including that for COVID-19 vaccinations” — is likewise more of a “nice to have” than a “need to have” that technically does nothing to reduce inflation or interest rates nor to increase the supply of anything. And it only gets dumber from there.
“It’s essential to boost the supply of key food and energy commodities,” writes Malpass. Okay, but he also goes on to recommend “[speeding] the transition to low-carbon energy sources. Reducing dependency on fossil fuels will need more investments in electricity grids, cleaner energy sources, and greater energy efficiency. National policymakers should create climate-smart regulatory frameworks, adjust incentive structures, and strengthen land use regulations.” Holy shizzle, is this guy for real? Rejecting far more reliable and powerful fossil fuels for “green” alternatives is what caused a huge chunk of the energy shortages and ensuing inflated cost of food. Can these geniuses stop with the “green energy” twaddle for five lousy minutes?
WBO also offers a double-whammy plan to jack up both interest rates and inflation even further. The third recommendation in Malpass’s introduction is to “step up debt relief efforts. … Debt relief needs to be rapid, comprehensive, and sizable in order to minimize debt overhang and risks to future growth.” Economically literate people know that erasing massive debt floods the system with cash, which cranks up inflation. And heaping losses on lenders makes them raise interest rates to reduce their future exposure.
Does the World Bank Organization want a depression? Because this is how you get a depression.
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