Original title: economists: energy and logistics crisis may put the United States back into the stagflation trap

Former Morgan StanleyStephen Roach, chairman of the Asian region and a well-known economist, recently warned that the current global energy crisis and the ongoing international logistics bottleneck may lead to the recurrence of the "stagflation" dilemma encountered by the United States in the 1970s, that is, Qualcomm Inc.The coexistence of inflation rate, high unemployment rate and low economic growth rate may lead to the complete failure of monetary policy regulation and control.

Since September, the global "energy shortage" has broken out in many places, and at the beginning of this week, international crude oil prices once again hit a new high since 2018. On the other hand, the price of NYMEX natural gas in the United States has more than quadrupled year-on-year to more than $6. To make matters worse, due to the persistence of logistics bottlenecks, CIF energy prices in the European and Asia-Pacific terminal consumer markets have risen even faster, which in turn has caused many countries and regions to face rare difficulties in power supply for many years. this, in turn, has further impacted the global industrial chain, leading to a further rise in the price of manufactured goods.

In fact, the container shipping industry "one box is difficult to find" and the electronics industry chain "chip shortage" has begun to haunt the global economy in the first half of the year, but at present, the pressure of energy supply has obviously worsened the situation. On the one hand, the world economy has not yet fully recovered from the impact of the epidemic; on the other hand, from the finished products of raw materials, it is certain that social prices will continue to rise across the board. This means that as long as there is another supply chain accident such as the blockage of Suez in the first half of the year, it will be an irreparable fate for the world's advanced economies to fall into the "stagflation" trap.

Once "stagflation" occurs, as the name implies, prices continue to rise while the real growth rate of the economy is almost stagnant. This is clearly a grim situation for the economy as a whole, and therefore an extreme test of the policy wisdom of central banks, and the Fed in particular. Roach pointed out that the ultra-loose monetary policy that the Fed had maintained for many years, especially the additional liquidity measures, was the main culprit that pushed the economy into a long-term environment of high inflation. As a result, the plight of high inflation and low growth faced by the United States in the 1970s as a result of the "Middle East oil crisis" may be repeated, and high inflation is not "temporary" as Fed officials expected, but may last longer than anyone imagines!

The economic expert pointed out that as overseas industrial chain activities are squeezed by power shortages and shipping bottlenecks, the United States is likely to see a general outbreak of inflation in the Christmas and New year consumption season at the end of the year. In the process, cold weather, concerns about the global trading environment and troubles in the international geopolitical situation may further worsen the situation.