Eugene van Den Berg
Oct, 2022
The role that a lack of-, or weak productivity plays in the inflation-, Central Bank- and Money Supply equation is being ignored, and hugely under-valued.
We find ourselves in an era of slack productivity. Reduced productivity combined with the Covid-19 government funded programs have become a toxic mix that adds to the current economic environment of high inflation amid (in order of driver):
- Weak climate change policy reducing investment in oil and gas since 2015;
- Rise in commodity prices since April 2020 amid aggressive growth in demand for commodities required to produce RE component parts (lithium for batteries) against a shortage of critical minerals (or under developed critical minerals mining cited by the International Energy Agency in 2021 research papers);
- Rise in oil prices driven by the aforementioned points amid large imbalances between oil demand and real oil supply.
- Sharp rise in inflation and money supply (which Central Banks deny, yet numbers don’t lie) stemming from the rise in oil & natural gas prices, and money printing by federal governments, all stemming from aforementioned;
Without productivity gains, the economic challenges quickly compound into more chaos down the road.
Eugene Van Den Berg
Eugene is an accomplished Analyst, Accountant, Controller, CFO, and Corporate Finance expert with many years of diverse finance and accounting experience across different industries and with different companies, including non-for-profits. He is a knowledge- and information worker with a passion to solve complex financial management problems and financial reporting processes. Eugene is passionate about finance and economics. He enjoys blogging about interesting economic aspects of current times. He also enjoys following how politics interjects with finance, economy and statistics. Future academic ambition includes enrolling for a PhD in Economics (for the fun of it!).