Poland highest inflation in 20 years

Poland highest inflation in 20 years.............
Poland, this Yank is telling you that inflation has just started and is going to get a lot worse than it is now.
It's far from over.
Plan accordingly and remember, J.R. told you so.

16%

I wonder how much it would be without the refugees. Yes, having a party for a couple of million guests ain't cheap.

When are they supposed to go home?

In Germany, inflation is slowly falling, it is currently around 6%, and the number of refugees is increasing rapidly.

You are posting Off-Topic again, Alien.
Inflation for Poland and the rest of the world has just started and only going to get worse, much worse.

Yes, it will certainly get much worse. I'd say though that Poland is used to (perhaps a bit too used to) inflation and people are more tolerant of price rises than they ought to be, inflation is very noticeable here. Because my job takes me out of a Poland for a couple of months at a time, I really notice it on my return, and it should be said that the way producers and retailers take advantage of it to make a fast buck only compounds the problem.

Things are going to get tough generally, however as I said, people in Poland are used to it and have survived it before.

Inflation in Poland is 16%, in Germany it is 6% and in Spain it is 2.5%. Since this is happening in an integrated market for services and goods, there is only one possible explanation . Prices in Poland were too low, prices in Germany were just right and prices in Spain were too high. Now everything evens out.

Letting the 'market' determine the prices of life's essentials is like letting a serial killer determine police investigation methods.

...as opposed to government bureaucrats. Poland should try that...Prices will be much lower and the shelves empty to make the decision of what to buy easier. A shopper's paradise...

I thought that all commies are dead by now. Unfortunately, some are still around...

There's nothing 'commie' about a country ensuring access to affordable and high quality food (or other essentials) just as there is nothing 'commie' about ensuring high hygiene standards in food production and regulating additives or food labelling.

Such things long predate communism and as I recall there were riots in Poland when the communist government reduced price controls on essentials.

Who should set prices?

I agree, Poland will be able to cope but the spoiled diaper dandy countries like the U.S. and Germany are the ones that are going to be in for a very rude awakening.

In my humble opinion this is because 50% of the Polish population live in rural areas and are self sufficient while 75% of the German population are city dwellers and 85% of the population in the U.S. live in cities where neither know how to grow a carrot or potato.

Once the shelves start going bare the higher the prices will be on what products are left creating hyperinflation.
And Alien, Germany will go down with the rest of the world.
The best trading tools will be bullets, tobacco, t.p., coffee and vodka.
Start stocking up now.


Supply and demand will.

We're actually much closer to that than people like to think. A plus for Poland is that everybody over about 45 or 50 has lived through it already.


For staple food items and things people can't easily live without?

Who sets them now in well-regulated societies where things like milk, eggs and bread are controlled?

You don't have to repeat my question. I remember what I asked.

So, who should set prices? I don't mean names. I mean title or a generic noun. I am assuming it would be a human being, not AI or a coin toss.

You don't have to repeat your question repeat Rich, because your question has already been answered.

He probably thinks he'll get a different answer if he keeps repeating the question, or that he'll initiate a 'debate'. He won't on either score.

And of course he knows the answer already.

Inflation is really noticeable here now. I wasn't posting here much for a couple of weeks since I was in London doing some work and noticed a few things. Despite prices in London being higher than the rest of the country (higher wages, dearer premises, etc) there were some real extremes, some things were a crazy price (we northerners love complaining about southern prices) yet there were also some things that were (in some shops) surprisingly cheap, even cheaper than the last time I was there.

Here in Warsaw, there's very little that's surprisingly cheap and prices generally rise and rise noticeably. I've noticed here that the biggest rises are in staple goods whereas some luxury or less necessary products aren't going up. This suggests people aren't buying them due to increased expenditure on necessary things.

In the area where I live (a posh suburb of Warsaw) pizzas in decent restaurants are getting close to the price you'd have expected to pay for a steak a couple of years ago. This is a very bad sign indeed.

No, he doesn't since you didn't answer.
Since you like playing stupid, let me rephrase it...

jon, your post #225 was an EXCELLENT post !
All of it.
Thank you as you were spot on !


Then who will he have to argue with all day besides the guy in the mirror ? :-/

Thanks.

You're right about the coming inflation. It's quite scary in Warsaw. I remember when low spending power here led to non essential businesses closing. That's happening now. There used to be three restaurants within walking distance from me. Now there are none.

In what countries are the price of bread, eggs and milk set by the govt ?

Hungary - and it's a disaster
Udmurtia - enough said
France has flirted with the idea and stepped back because it is madness

Price controls will always lead to supply issues

It will take a long time to get over the inflationary effects of covid and lockdown, but Venezuelan solutions will only make things worse.

Italy's govt decided to blame it on the banks and had a bruising encounter with the real world yesterday - they had backed down by teatime

Poland has itself to blame, though I can appreciate the politics.

1) The main driver of inflation, across the board - regardless of industry - is energy prices. Nobody held a gun to Poland's head when it came to reducing purchases of Russian energy. Great virtue signaling, but you didn't have even a 1/10th of the resources the Germans had to address the issue.

2) One thing which could have significantly depressed prices for key food items in Poland, is if you opened your market to Ukrainian agri-produce. Of course, this would come at the price of the destruction of your own agriculture industry (something many countries did, perhaps not as rural in demographic profile as Poland).

3) Idiots have been appointed by PiS into the economic bloc of the cabinet, as well at the Central Bank. Main criteria seems to be loyalty to Chairman Kaczynski's unorthodox views on how markets work.

4) Being on the Zloty, in times like these, is of course a much more probable way of ending up with high inflation, than being on the Euro.

Setting price controls, as Jon wants, is rarely a good solution. Key word - rarely. Those rare cases where it sort of, maybe, potentially works - are almost all cases where prices are set higher than would otherwise exist in the market - not lower. This is normally done to benefit a thin cohort of farmers, at the expense of the rest of the population. Price controls in the other direction, are great at putting people out of business.

Those cases (not so rare) are with staples. In the U.K. pre-1990 it worked very well indeed for staples like eggs, milk etc and another positive was that the affordable prices for those meant that they outsold less healthy processed alternatives.


A very clear idea; see further back in the thread. Still no engaging though.

The war is certainly an important cause of inflation.

The zloty is not - it had actually and bizarrely been very strong for the last 6 months.

The main reasons though are the disruptions in supply caused by covid and a series of giveaways by PiS that got out of control - 500 plus. Extra pensions, unsustainable minimum wage increases and the mortgage thing

The zloty certainly IS a reason.

The strength of the zloty, forint, koruna is in fact a direct result of inflation. The incredibly high (in recent historic terms) interest rates, make it attractive to hold zlotys for some investors. As the Polish central bank continues to attempt to tame inflation by keeping interest rates high, the zloty will continue to be strong - yes. But you are missing my broader point about the benefits/drawbacks (depending on context) of being on the zloty vs the euro.

Being on the zloty, means - as I explained above - having much higher interest rates than in the eurozone. What does this mean in practice? It means it is much more expensive for businesses to borrow. While leading to a general economic contraction, it also means that business are going to attempt to pass on these costs to consumers. What do we call it when costs to consumers rise?


Here I agree

What do you think about holding gold to protect against inflation?

In my industry, this is typically interpreted as some sign of weak mindedness.

In general - historically - yes, gold has acted as a good hedge against inflation. Except, for those cases when its price fell like a rock - far more than the Sterling or Dollar ever fell.

Gold is highly volatile. None of our currencies are pegged to gold anymore, and developments in the mining industry or idiosyncratic shifts in price due to changes in investor sentiment can create huge volatility.

If you held gold instead of USD, over the last century - you would have done well. If you did it for shorter periods of time over the last 10-15 years - then you are more likely to have been wrecked than made any return.

Right now inflation is at historic highs - what is gold doing? Well - it's actually moving sideways. It hasn't gone up all that much - what a great hedge against inflation!

Land is better than gold.

Stocks of very good companies are better than gold.

Bonds are better than gold. They are literally designed to provide higher yields, as inflation goes higher.

Other currencies are better than gold. For example, for US investors wary of inflation, the Japanese Yen has for a long time acted as a safe haven. As one currency weakens, you can always find another that is strengthening.

Please do not buy gold unless it is to wear it.

Gold and silver prices are dropping too.


Why mommy, why mommy, why mommy, why mommy
(Koo Koo, Koo Koo)

The problem with regulating prices, is you can tell businessmen what to sell something at, and you can even place export barriers so they have nowhere else to go - but you cannot force them to continue producing something.

If I'm used to enjoying a 30% gross profit margin on sales of my eggs to Tesco, and then suddenly my freight, labor, feed, and fuel prices go up - eroding my margin to 10% - I'm not going to be very inclined to continue in the business of selling eggs. I might even try to go grow something, which the UK government has not started regulating yet, so I can once again earn the profits that are necessary to develop and grow.

That is exactly what is happening in Hungary.

Orban not only introduce this crazy policy, he has another policy that if the supermarket is making a loss it can be taken over automatically by a locally owned supermarket [which are typically owned by his chums]

So the supermarkets have an upper level on the profits and a lower level of zero. That is pure socialism. He's an intelligent guy, went to Oxford etc but seems to think he can push back the tide here.

Other people have said that to me, one of whom I remember buying gold and doing well.

I bought a load of old sovereigns in the 80s and 90s (cheaper than buying 'virtual' gold or tablets but slightly lower resale price too and easy to sell in the U.K.) and by weight the current value has outstripped any other investment I've made except the house and flat which I don't consider financial investments.

I'm not talking about making a fast buck here. I get paid in cash (eur and usd) every few months at a time, don't want to either pay it in the bank or have depreciating banknotes stuffed away in different countries. Aside from depreciation, there's also a potential burglary risk.

Hard to know the best thing to do. These aren't million pound investments, but involve enough cash to worry about. I dislike currency trading and am sceptical about the future of Sterling and euro, and to a point usd too since all three are vulnerable to inflation.


Bugger 'businessmen'. Farmers will always produce eggs and milk and with something as vital as food policy, society (via their elected representatives) can certainly ensure they continue to do so.

...the leftist scum is that they can only act on feelings - like women - and ignore logic, facts, and the econ laws.

That's why this one can't state the obvious and that he likes big and all-knowing government - especially the kind that loves "diversity and inclusion".