Topic: Economics 101. Stagflation. (Read 383 times)

Because inflation has always been a monetary phenomenon, caused by money printing and too much government spending. When there's inflation, it's a symptom that there's too much supply of money in circulation. What the Central Bank does to control it is to tighten monetary policy.


It's either the Central Bank tightens aggressively to cause the recession themselves, or inflation will cause one for the Central Bank. And it's better if the Central Bank causes one early while the people still have their savings. Plus because inflation will eat up people's savings sooner or later, and when this happens, the economy will slow down, BUT inflation will still be high = Stagflation.

You have a valid question here, but the condition you explain will only happened if the world is in ideal situation, but that's not the case, nothing is ideal. Unfortunately most of the world is run in capitalistic manner, everyone looking for profit, you need money to make money, the more money you have more money you can make. Thus result in bigger economic gap. People who own most of the housing/real estate is people with much capital, all they want is to get more profit, they will not sell lower, let alone give it for free. On the other hand, the people who need the housing doesn't have enough money that is needed to buy the house. Same happened in other commodity, seller want more profit, buyer don't have enough money, and those sellers won't sell it cheaper because they already have much money it's not like they need to sell it immediately, they can wait, they think have enough money to spend until they got the ideal price.

In Argentina there's a particularly strong stagflation happening now. While a big part can be explained by "money printing"* I think there is another very important factor: inflationary inertia due to a "vicious cycle". This cycle not only includes the well known "price salary spiral" but has some more factors linked to the expectations of a continuously devaluating currency. It is composed by the following phases:

0) (see below)
1) Goods rise in price in the retail sector, because there was an increase in the wholesale price and additionally the retail merchants want to preserve their margins.
2) The consumers don't lower their consumption as they already expect price increases, instead they strive for higher salaries creating a price-salary spiral, which impacts production costs, but these cost increases alone only would explain about 30-50% of the real inflation rate.
3) When the consumers get their salary, they invest a part of it in foreign currencies (primarily the US dollar) because local currency options (like fixed bank deposits) have a meager ROI and they believe the dollar will beform better. Also, companies which import goods try to pay them as early as possible.
4) The value of the local currency decreases (compared to the dollar) due to the low demand (and high demand for foreign currencies) explained by the two mechanisms in step 3.
5) Currency devaluation leads to higher import prices, and thus goods with a high proportion of imported parts rise in price.
6) Steps 2 and 5 creates pressure to production prices, and they rise.
7) / 0) As a consequence, also wholesale prices rise.

(The cycle starts again, Step 7 is also Step 0)

While both the price-salary spiral, the currency devaluation spiral and money printing can explain about 50% of the price increase (or more, in the case of imported goods), the rest is explainable by the fact that all parts in the supply chain continuously rise their prices more than they would be forced to, to hedge against price increases in their own supply chain. So we have, in addition to these two mechanisms, a lot of small price increases have to be added, from the raw material producer to the retailer, with the wholesale sector probably being the most "greedy" because they are often big companies with high market power.

This creates an inflation inertia. Consumers (including the government) could stop it if they consumed even less, and thus price elasticity increases which makes it difficult to rise prices more. But neither the government nor private consumers have incentives to do this.

Argentina is an extreme example, but I can imagine that long-term stagflation works approximately the same in other countries too. Short-term stagflation, in contrast, is mostly caused by the factors Wind_FURY has cited in the Investopedia article.


I think what those "people in denial" criticize is more the "inflation" part than the "stagnation" part. Of course you could argue that if you had 7% inflation with some economic growth and some months later you have 5% with zero growth, then you're "tending towards stagflation". However, in this case it's likely that the inflation will continue to decrease more due to the economic slowdown, if there are no new external shocks (this could be the case due to the rising oil price for example) or if inflation inertia (like I explained) has already catched on.

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*there are three different mechanisms for that in Argentina, not only QE (Central bank buying government bonds) but also direct credits (ATs) and something called "giro de utilidades" which gives the Central Bank the option to directly "give away" money to the government as a gift in months where the currency devaluates. This is of course a quite inflationary process as it's a kind of vicious cycle.

This. Interest rates affect many Europeans's family budgets in a negative fashion. Frankly, I'm confused how rising interest rates can fight inflation? People pay more for their mortgage so they need to earn more, charge more for their work or service and voila: we get more inflation! Fuel prices are soaring too, accelerating the inflation even more. Additionally, there are rumors of the next Covid wave coming soon... so hold on to your butts, gentlemen!

It's laughable that the people I talk to that remain in denial of the high-probability of Stagflation that's going to happen in many regions around the world.

In Europe, Christine Lagarde raised interest rates again, it's the tenth hike and she won't truly confirm when she'll stop. That will slow down most European economies. But in other parts of the world, China's Stimulus and the supply cuts for Crude Oil will cause higher fuel prices and therefore more inflation.

Stagflation will not merely be a narrative.

Early signs of Stagflation appeared during the pandemic but now it's worsening considerably due to rising energy prices. The worst part is that I can't see any signs of stopping. With oil prices bound to increase even more, we can only guess where it will take us and if global economy is going to survive.

I probably didn’t pay much attention to my economic classes but, am surely paying much attention now.

I think my country has made this make with the drastic rise in oil price following the removal of the subsidy on the petroleum products. This pushed price to almost triple the formal price at an instant without any warning. This has result in citizens having to pack their vehicles and seek alternative means of movement.
The gist of transportation has gone up as well and with majority of the citizens living within the minimum wage range, it makes life extremely difficult for most people and consequently affects production.

As stated above,
The policy was instantaneous, not deliberated on and we are still having to face the adversity that comes with it while hoping on a better reinvestment of the funds that would be generated from it. We just can’t tell if that would be happening.

Still, government is looking to put in place more hikes in other sectors to ensure money is being generated without looking at production. They seem to forget this money goes in circles!

Good clarification, I agree about the EU and China. By the way, the Chinese crisis, with its development and the growth of problems in the Chinese economy, will allow neighboring countries to "intercept" not all but many directions, gaining customers who previously bought in China. China is now trying to build around itself a yuanized environment of satelite-donor countries, which clearly does not allow us to hope for their development.

Regarding military coups, I will say this - almost all such coups never bring positive economic changes. Probably the best way is the change of power by the people of the country and the transfer of powers to adequate managers (I mean the government). Yes, and the most important thing is to fight corruption. unfortunately it is a very big and complicated problem that destroys the economy of any country

Incoming Bank Of England deputy governor said, "Risks of August BOE inflation forecast to the upside". She also said, "U.K. economic activity is weak".

It would have probably more efficient of her to use one sentence, "U.K. risks of going into Stagflation".

Plus another inflationary event. That's not good for countries going into a techncial recession, https://www.livemint.com/market/commodities/oil-sizzles-at-10-month-high-on-saudi-russia-output-cuts-opec-upbeat-on-demand-brent-over-91bbl-11694526378060.html

Saudi Arabia, and Russia will cut outputs of Crude. Fuel prices will surge.

It's entirely debatable whether income inequality leads to reduced economic growth. We would need to first define what income inequality looks like because disparity in income has always existed. At its core, disparity in income is income inequality and thus it's impossible for a free and fair economy to allow everyone to earn the same income. It assumes equal skill level for every participant in the workforce. If a physician has a different and more valuable skillset than a delivery person, income disparity must exist in a free market society. Presumably, taking away wealth from the physician and handing it to the delivery person is what solving wealth inequality would look like, and I don't see why that would do anything but reduce incentive to generate wealth hence lowering GDP.

You can point to any country that's condensed the welfare state into a centralized entity through high taxes and look at their GDP growth. It's always been stagnant. Israel in the late 90's and early 2000's struggled with growth and high inflation because they had taken wealth from high income earners and put them into generous social welfare programs that gave a disincentive for Israelis entering the labor market. It wasn't until the their Finance Minister reduced the social welfare state that labor participation increased and their economy began to grow. Of course, this was off the back of liberalization of their monetary policy -- reducing tariffs and opening the country to free markets and such. Point being, they tried a wealth redistribution approach and it didn't work.

expanded economy is one of the things that should be judged on one thing. The economy is interconnected and linked to each other. We have economic sanctions that make concepts such as globalization and economic integration difficult. Therefore, it is difficult to say that the cause of stagflation is one cause, and there are factors, and each factor will affect them. .

The government's experiments in combating inflation by raising interest rates address a certain type of inflation, but the inflation that occurs is caused by different factors. treating inflation by simply raising interest rates and continuing with policies of raising interest led to the occurrence of stagflation. Instead of being a temporary stagnation, it became an increase in product prices due to fluctuating energy prices, problems. All supply chains lead to this result. The beginning of the reform will be after stopping raising interest rates.

I appreciate your responses, thank you for taking the time to write them.
That's a good point from the perspective of businesses battling inflation, I didn't take that into account.
Thank you for pointing out population growth. I guess I didn't think about it because my country's been experiencing a negative population trend for a long time. But looking at this data, there's no population growth or very low population growth (below 1.5%) in the majority of the world, including European countries, China, India, and the US. So it has to be accounted for from the long-term perspective, so some growth is perhaps required, but a year or two of no growth or very low growth shouldn't be significantly bad regarding population growth.
As for redistribution, could you mention some examples of it leading to GDP reduction? Because what I see it research that says that increase in income inequality leads to GDP reduction, but that's a very different thing because wealth redistribution is meant to reduce income and wealth inequality.

GDP growth matters because the population is growing. If GDP growth shrinks or remains stagnant with a growing population, that means lower quality of life because the amount of goods and services produced are distributed more thinly.

If you wanted to focus on redistribution, you could. That would involve taking wealth from the highest generators and giving it to those that generate less.

Historically, wealth redistribution has always resulted in a net reduction in GDP. It's not as practical as it may seem.

The current leaders are not looking or thinking of a way to improve the economy from facing Stagflation. Instead they are negleting their responsiblity on how to reduce inflation and they keep on printing money and pour into the society to decieve themselves that all is well.

They are very greedy,that they are after power and winning territories for their own selfish benefits. The third world countries are already suffering from stagflation because there is high rate of inflation,high rate of unemployment and poor productive power. Mismanagement is another factor that leads an country to Stagflation. The price of oil is really a key factor that determines the state of the country economy.

The US and EU are developed nations with a high sensitive democratic leadership so the level of unemployment and inflation shouldn't be as pronounced as it is in developing nations as for China their weak global economy and and decline in demands from other international market has been their weak spot which has affected their production strength as well as their investments.

For my own country Nigeria it is nothing other than poor leadership and undemocratic power tussle. I wish there was a global leadership overseeing the affairs of countries like this to help the mismanagement of funds and poor decision making but unfortunately there can never be. The only hope is if there will be a repetition of what played out in Garbon in Nigeria where the Military will take over power maybe stagflation could recede to a large extent

That is the fact and this statement has nothing to do with what is produced by a bad economy because everyone must try to get out of every economic problem that occurs on their own. But you also have to remember that the government has the right and responsibility to protect and prosper society even though the facts say otherwise, for poor people being able to get rice to eat is more than enough compared to talking about stagflation, recession or inflation. It's no use for them to know the causes of these three things because what they know is that making money nowadays is very difficult and most people turn a blind eye to the problems that occur and even try to oppress weak people.

Life today is on the verge of moralization and many people have never been sensitive to the problems faced by poor communities. On the other hand, the guarantee of the right to life facilitated by law seems to have disappeared because each person and the government are busy thinking about their own lives. Therefore, each individual must work better to get out of problems like this and help other people if we have the opportunity or have much better finances.

Where I'm from, a stagflation of sorts must have already come. The prices of fuel are rising pretty high and fast. Very basic necessities are getting more and more expensive. Food as basic as rice, onion, tomato, and others are rising in prices inexplicably high.

Although unemployment numbers are improving a bit, investment is plunging. Moreover, debt is rising. Debt-to-GDP ratio is already breaching a level that is worrisome. Economic policies are a bit haphazard. Even the country's top economic managers don't understand where the policies implemented are coming from and how they're crafted.

Your assessment of the situation is correct, if a company projected to grow 10% and it only grows 9% this is treated as a tragedy and it is not surprising its stock price fell many points just because of it, and this is despite the fact the company still grew, it was simply not as fast as the CEO expected.

So no growth is treated as the worst thing it could happen, but this is because of our current economic model in which governments print money at will, and in that case if your company is not in perpetual growth then you are in fact losing money, so before we can concentrate on the issue of a better wealth distribution, the whole economic system will have to change, and we are still far from this happening at all.

I believe the term "technical recession" is as old as the study of modern economics itself. If there's a recession for two consecutive quarters = it's a Technical Recession. The politicians actually are changing the official definition by not recognizing it, also telling the bureaucracy to "cook the numbers".

The term Stagflation, although a newer term, was first used during 1965. But that doesn't mean that it isn't real. We will probably hear more of the term for the last quarter of 2023 - first quarter/second quarter of 2024.

Okay, I have a question here.
In the past, let's say even a couple of centuries ago, humanity was still battling natural forces, unable to produce enough for everyone. If there was a drought, a flood, or something else, it was a catastrophe because the already limited resources got even more scarce, resulting in even more people dying. But starting from the industrial revolution, we did a major breakthrough which allowed to finally overcome the issue of not producing enough. Growth was very important to finally reach a point of abundance.
Now, the thing is, we've reached that point. Globally, we produce enough food to feed everyone, enough clothes, enough medicine. Perhaps not enough housing, but also a lot of vacant housing and all the resources needed to build more. But we're still stuck in thinking that slower growth is a bad thing, and no growth is terrible.
Isn't the issue no longer about how much we produce, but how we use and distribute what we produce? So doesn't it mean that we could, hypothetically, significantly improve the lives of people without any economic growth necessary? So couldn't at least some issues be resolved by focusing on redistribution and rethinking priorities?

In the majority of countries with stagflation, the justice mechanism is in the hands of a certain group of people. There is no confidence in the economy with stagflation and since there is no confidence in the judiciary and justice, there is no investment from different countries. Those who become rich in the country flee abroad. There is a shortage of euros and dollars. High interest rates are given to attract investment and to make banking work and the economy grinds to a halt.

Since the autocracy does not change, investment does not come again. In such an economy, nobody opens businesses and unemployment peaks along with inflation. I think there is only one way to end stagflation and that is the independence of the judiciary and the equal distribution of justice. Because contrary to popular belief, the economy is not an area that grows or shrinks in line with monetary policies. The economy is all about trust in the law on the contrary.

What may cause stagflation:
here one example of what may cause stagflation: central banks typically use tools like changing interest rates to help the economy. they lower rates to boost the economy and raise rates to control inflation. But in stagflation... this strategy do not work well because when both high inflation and high unemployment happening together. it is like trying to fix two problems at once, which is really hard for central banks to balance.

I believe we are already into it partly, if we are to consider the way the governments are handling the economy situations in each of their countries, almost everyone is being affected by inflation allover the world, will this be a continuous influence or just a present challenge we will soon get away with, it's not about being affected by inflation but the role of governments towards the people who should find live affordable at all cost, we are in a situation now whereby the government is not focusing on their own people by after their usual global recognition being a figure head, while the people were left unattended to, inflation is affecting the masses daily economy and earning a living is becoming more tougher.

No offense - but the global economy doesn't care about people who work for a "bowl of rice". It's rude and unpleasant, but it's a fact. You just have to realize that these are different levels of the economy.  This layer of the earth's population does not affect the "wallets" of the big economy....
And in some sense, the presence of poor regions, countries and people is even "good" for the global economy, these people do not create problems like the middle class, for example, who have more rights, money, and the ability to express their opinions and demand something. Unfortunately, this is the way the world works.

The financial assets, which serve as a hedge against inflation could theoretically serve as a hedge against stagflation as well.
The problem is that stagflation could lead to economic stagnation, which pulls the prices of various assets down.
We can't have booming gold and real estate prices in times of stagflation, because there's not enough money in circulation to help in boosting the prices.
There's no hedge against unemployment. You will have to find a job.
The good thing is that stagflation is impossible in reality, because we life in the world of the "money printing machines".
When there is a small sign of recession and stagnation, the central banks simply respond by throwing more money at the economy.

Maybe if the policy makers get off their high horse and start doing things that's beneficial to the people and not the private business sectors, probably we will see that stagflation thing go away, hell even just focusing on education and worker's rights will probably make a big difference already. I don't have the data or articles read to back this yet but in my opinion, protecting the labor of a country and making sure that they're at the happiest level makes the labor less unbearable thus creating efficiency.

The economy is getting worse with all its problems where almost all costs in every country have risen to higher levels than in the last few years. And this condition may have reached its peak when the pandemic hit almost all countries yesterday. Many businesses cannot survive and even reduce their employees by stopping them from working to reduce costs.

And the affected countries are starting to wake up slowly by moving everything so they can overcome all the problems that have occurred. Maybe it will still take a few more years until we see the condition of each country recovering and developing, but until that time comes, we can only keep trying and do what we can as citizens.

Economists will probably discuss this more often because they are used to discussing the state of the economy in their country. And hopefully, economists can find the right solution to quickly get out of a situation that is not yet profitable for every country.

This is exactly what we are currently experiencing in our country. Almost all of the basic necessities are becoming more expensive, and while there may be other reasons not mentioned here, I believe these are also the factors contributing to the challenges we are facing today. Sometimes, corrupt leaders are also to blame. There doesn't seem to be a concrete plan to improve things; it feels like they are only thinking about their own interests. They are even borrowing heavily from other countries, but where is the money really going? We can't feel the benefits. They even use traffic as a sign of economic progress in the country, my god, it's more like gaslighting.

It's been happening in my country for years now, albeit not as severe or felt as it now after many events that occurred (example: the COVID-19 lockdown) but it always has been present. Low employment has always been a problem in my country despite a big percentage of the population seeking a job, in connection with that food prices and other necessities like utility rates continue to rise. When COVID-19 hit these problems' impact became double and you can actually feel just how much it has affected the country, heck even people who seldomly talks about economy in my area had started having discussion about it due to worry and well mostly complains. Stagflation will probably be a term more talked about in universities in my country soon.

Don't teach stagflation, recession and inflation to people who work to get a bite of rice because they don't need that explanation but what you can give them. I remember these words coming out of the mouth of a political figure and he was one of the people who always spoke out for justice for small communities. Economic conditions greatly influence healthy thinking and when someone can take a small role individually that is where they will learn to get out of the current bad economic problems. The government's job is to provide solutions because they are ordered by law to concern the survival of its people and a corrupt government will also create misery for its people.

Theories only explain some events and there is no consensus that can be applied in a plurality to all countries because conditions may vary, culture and the area where people work can determine which theory can be applied because it needs appropriate adjustments. A country looks strong if its people do not live in poverty in large percentages and a country can also be said to be strong if they are able to dominate the world economy.

They are creative with terminologies, inflation and stagflation. I remember how politicians try to mislead citizens with recession and technical recession which is reflected recession but they want to avoid it and reduce its severity by using a creative term, technical recession.

Why they don't use a term hyper inflation but use stagflation? Because hyper inflation sounds very bad while stagflation is not and looks to be a new term, need time for citizens to discover and accept it.

Bad economic policies, gold standard removal and other reasons like oil price increases are some factors that come together with governments to print more money into their economies then cause inflation in some countries or hyper inflation in some special nations.

Which ones?
Inflation is going down so you can't talk about high and ticky inflation unless it's Argentina or Turkey or Iran!
Employment is going up in most countries again, some even hit record employment levels this year!
So, in order to qualify for stagflation, is there any country (that matters globally) that meets those criteria?

Right now it's far more possible we're going to get hit with a recession and deflation rather than stagflation!

The government has jettison both the school economic theories and even the off book economy teaches and they seem like no direction any more. Perhaps one is tempted to think that the past leadership were more knowledgeable in economics and how to move their country forward. The current leaders are so engrossed in power tussle but they forget that when you go to war, instigate it or try to push others into it then you have changes and challenges in your budgets and financial policies which of course also leads to negative changes in your capital projects and amenities to improve the lives and standard of living of the people.

In fact, all of our economies live in these cases regardless of the names. We may not realize the subtle differences between the different names in the economy, but in fact we live and suffer from them without knowing what the name is called.

In my country, we have been suffering for years from the deterioration of the economy, slow growth, low demand, low employment, high prices, low domestic product, the collapse of the value of the national currency and hundreds of other economic problems. I do not know how any government can solve all these problems?

In fact, the average person does not care much about all these academic terms. All he cares about is searching for practical solutions to get out of this misery, because there is no hope for him that the government will solve any problem from the list of accumulated problems.

Interesting topic.
A bit of history about the term itself:
Stagflation - a situation in which economic recession and depressed state of the economy are combined with rising prices - inflation. The invention of the term is attributed to Ian MacLeod, a British politician and finance minister of the early 1970s. The expression was first used by Macleod in a parliamentary speech in 1965

But today the description is more commonly used: A dangerous combination of low GDP growth, high inflation and unemployment.

Sorry for the example, but a synonym for a long description, is one word from the Russian language, in folk folklore, and this state is described by one word "ZHOPA".

However, judging by analytics, this very stagflation is receding in the US and EU, at least by the indicator of declining unemployment and slowing inflation.
China is even experiencing deflation, but it is "interesting" - prices are falling not because of the strengthening of the yuan, but due to a decrease in purchasing power and demand of domestic consumers.

It is interesting to know what is the situation in other countries/regions ?

Pretty counterintuitive if you ask me but it definitely happens.

In commerce I think this happens the most when a newly-introduced product in the market was so groundbreaking it's making other older variants of the same product useless. Since nobody's using these products anymore let alone buying them, the supply is flooded with newly-produced products that are not accounted for especially when the market change was so sudden everyone was blindsided. This increase in price along with the lessening interest of the people for this particular product, contribute to a stagnating/deflating value of the product in question.

It would've been really nice if everything's just deflationary in value and in nature yeah? But that wouldn't really sit well with the laws of physics as well as the law of supply and demand, so we're stuck here creating mental gymnastics over concepts that don't make sense at first glance but are a great factor for why our whole economy's collapsing lol.

I can relate with the theory that the STAGFLATION has a link with oil price, I am from a country that is already experiencing economy down turn due to the increase in fuel the product of refining oil, this situation has really affected the country's economy and citizens.

And due to this crises it has cost increase in standard of living, with transportation, food and other commodities going up .

I think most economy are already in this situation because of the high inflation that causes price of goes to rise and bringing purchasing value down as the currency is devalued. Production in turn is also affected because when goods don't leave there manufacturing area to the customer where utility is delivered then no need for continuing production and that means the economy because stagnated.

Bitcoin is not the solution for economies that are struggling with inflation IMO at least not when it is not legalized.

In reality about half of the countries in the world are experiencing some form of stagflation already and have been for several years now. This was only worsened by the recent economic events like the lockdown caused by covid-19 and crisis in different countries in the world but the issue has always existed for different countries and some of this countries supply wealth to their neocolonialists boosting their economy.

The next decades will be full of uncertainties but there will be good economies borne out of it while some others will slip further into inflation.

You have started an informative topic here. But this topic would have consisted of more information about Stagflation and it must have answers to some common questions that would come after reading this information about SF (Stagflation). For example.
1. What is the main difference between Inflation and Stagflation?
Inflation is the increase in prices of goods and services over a period of time. While Stagflation is the ultra-pro-max version of Inflation. In SF, with the increase in prices of goods and services, the rate of unemployment also increases.

Well, now I wonder why we used to say BTC is a hedge against inflation and not a hedge against Stagflation! Or is it? I am a bit confused now too hehe.

As BTC also provided a lot of employment over time and increased the employment rates. It created a lot of Blockchain, Metaverse, NFTs, AI, etc., etc. developers. Who is working and living a life (happy one). I think it won't be wrong to say that BTC is also a hedge against Stagflation.

I got a good idea of what forms it, the lack of value in a transaction especially the lack of price certainty.   If inflation is occurring some will equate this to growth, nominal figures rise.    Whats actually happening is during my business I might barely make a profit for all my efforts, by the time I order the base commodities and processed with labor a product to sell, distributed and retailed this product;  all this amounts to time for inflation to deduct any profit margin.
   Quite easily any business activity is attacked like acid decay over time, reduced and impaired till value gained is near zero with nominal figures only showing some gain for efforts and investment made.  Any product or business I can flip over night becomes the bias in the economy.  Nobody will want to stand around long enough to lose money on their balance sheet to this inflation tax from government.
  Price controls dont work, whatever came next it wasnt any worse then pretending you dictate a price.  Ultimately government orders amount to violence on the economy, its brutalizing in its effect and damage done.  By that I mean if you disagree with a price control you become a criminal, its not a solution to anything actually you have reduced the market, increased rigidity and the situation with fracture imo   Any time production drops you can cause harm and it easily raises the price (vs demand which is unaltered) so price control ironically can actually raise a price.

  Government with its thumb on the scales can easily start a failure situation, at the least supply will ship aboard.    Energy export was banned till recently I think and there's dozens of anti competitive laws causing problems for industry and an open market to be most efficient.  https://www.cato.org/blog/russian-oil-table-jones-act-serves-barrier-using-domestic-supplies

Stagflation will probably be an economic term that many of us plebs will start hearing more and more of from the news as the economic situation in many regions around the world continue to worsen. Stagflation is an economic cycle, or condition, when there's slow growth, low demand, low employment, BUT high "sticky" inflation. That's where many countries are probably going.

Plus if you didn't pay attention in your Economics class in school, it's currently the best time to learn about it because it's probably going to come sooner than expected. So let's discuss.