Silence Peasants! Bank of England Tells Britons To "Just Accept" Being Worse Off
The intricacies of what is driving the global financial markets are as complex and irrational as they have ever been. Unfortunately, those complications are a self-inflicted wound as economists around the world seem willing to do anything other than stopping their money printers from going brrrrrrrr for perpetuity. The proliferations of that fiscal irresponsibility have created a cost of living crisis that has ascended to the forefront of public discourse throughout the world, with the hypocrisy of the cartels formed between central bankers and governments becoming impossible to ignore. That is of course only if you're an ordinary person. To those driving this crisis, ignorance remains bliss and the dial for cognitive dissonance has been turned up to eleven.
Huw Pill, a top economist at the Bank of England, succinctly illustrated the schism between the plebians of today and those sitting upon the Palatine Hill. During an interview on the Beyond Unprecedented podcast about the UK's untenable rate of inflation, Pill offered those struggling amidst the cost of living crisis with a simple solution: just accept being worse off. "Somehow in the UK, someone needs to accept that they're worse off and stop trying to maintain their real spending power by bidding up prices, whether through higher wages or passing energy costs on to customers etc," Pill said verbatim.
During March, YoY inflation in the UK hit 10.1% despite projections that it would fall below 10%. The public relations team at the Bank of England was quick to take a page out of the Biden administration's playbook by saying the rate of inflation actually went down considering the 10.4% increase the nation had in February. The Bank of England has kept a target of 2% inflation on record despite the unassailable retort that maintaining the feasibility of that goal requires a complete divorce from reality.
Even those coming to Pill's defense were unable to deny the fundamental force driving the cost of living crisis in the UK: the rapid expansion of the country's monetary supply. Thomas Moore, Senior Investment Director at Abrdn spoke to the BBC in light of Pill's comments, offering that concession. "The problem is monetarist economists believe that money supply is the key root of inflation, so there's this debate raging at the moment - was it those one-off transitory factors [that caused inflation] or was it actually a cause of this underlying issue of money supply?"
While Pill's comments are astoundingly tone deaf, it would be equally naive to imagine anything less considering this isn't the first time that a high ranking official at the Bank of England responded outcries against it economic policy with remarks resulting in public backlash. Last year, Governor of the Bank of England Andrew Bailey directed workers across the nation to not request pay raises in order to do their part in the fight against inflation. Bailey's directive came shortly after the central bank raised rates to 0.5% from 0.25% in that same pursuit. At the time, YoY inflation in the UK was hovering around 7% compared to the 10% it stands at now, showing the bank's inept ability to deal with the issue.
While the commentary from the likes of Andrew Bailey and Huw Pill is repugnant in light of their roles in creating this financial crisis, expecting anything different would be equally indefensible. Time and time again, public officials and their counterparts in the private sector have made their wanton abandonment of the interest of the working class crystal clear. Yet, despite that being utterly apparent, those living under their rule still entrust their oppressors to liberate them. That absence of agency in their own lives is something ordinary people remain entirely unaccountable of. For as long as that's the case, the dynamic driving the central banker's rule over them is something that they shouldn't expect to change.
