No, ‘hyperinflation’ is not here

There’s a lot of concern out there about inflation right now. Including, unsurprisingly, here in Germany. And where not just talking about the Bund yield. This is this morning’s hot take from state broadcaster ZDF:

For non-German speakers, the headline reads ‘Fear of hyperinflation’.

The article is not entirely unreasonable, focusing on the pressures we’ve seen build up in producer prices over the course of the pandemic. As markets this morning are all too aware ahead of an important US print Wednesday, we are likely to see broader consumer price inflation surge in the coming months.

We’re betting that it’ll be a temporary blip. Round about this time last year, the West Texas Intermediate oil contract went sub zero. Twelve months on, we were always likely to see some dramatic CPI readings simply as a result of the slump in price pressures that happened when the pandemic first struck.

To boot, take away stimulus cheques and furlough schemes, and the labour market on either side of the Atlantic is nowhere near strong enough to trigger the sort of wage-price spiral that saw inflation surge into the double digits in the US and UK in the 1970s. Even in Germany, where manufacturing unions are still relatively strong, companies like Volkswagen say they don’t need to pay their workers more. Those are workers who did not get a pay rise in 2020, nor will they get one this year either — though they will see a 2.8 per cent bump from 2019 levels in 2022.

But our main point is this: Even if the price pressures seen in supply chains do spread more widely, and even if higher CPI readings do endure, raising the spectre of hyperinflation — which conjures up the cash-in-wheelbarrows images witnessed in the 1920s to many here — is completely overblown.

The article itself notes that hyperinflation is a phenomenon where prices shoot up by more than 50 per cent. We’re nowhere near that sort of situation — even over the next few months inflation readings are likely to remain in the single digits. To suggest otherwise is nothing short of scaremongering.