Our monetary bubble is about to burst

OK, I finally watched Netflix’s Don’t Look Up. Surprisingly, I enjoyed it — especially before its effective subtitle for us thickos, THIS IS A METAPHOR FOR CLIMATE CHANGE, YOU F-ING MORONS. Otherwise, the film might have playfully dramatised the more general phenom of fiddling with celebrity bodices while Rome burns.

The comet at which I’m looking up could arrive far more immediately than perilous global warming. Money is in trouble. I’m not only referring to a cost-of-living crisis. Money itself is in trouble.

Let’s contemplate, to coin a phrase, a basket of deplorables. US inflation just hit 7.5 per cent, the highest in 40 years. UK inflation, now 5.5 per cent and the highest in 30 years, is expected to reach 7 per cent by spring. EU inflation is 5.1 per cent. All these indices are headed in one direction. Inflation is often described as a tax, but I have a better word for it: stealing.

Central banks will deliver us, right? Because controlling inflation is their main job, right? Except this cavalry is riding to the rescue on those miniature ponies that come up to your waist. The US Fed’s lending rate is still 0.08 per cent, believe it or not. Its fiscal Grand Poobahs plan to convene at their leisure a full month from now, perhaps to raise the rate to a giant 0.5 per cent (or perhaps not). By the end of 2022, the Fed may raise rates all the way up to 1.5 per cent! Dizzying, that. Although having raised its rate to that towering 0.5 per cent more quickly, the Bank of England is likely to make the same miniature-pony increases as the Fed.

If you believe that central banks are genuinely independent of government, you probably still imagine in middle age that the packages under the Christmas tree when you were a kid were put there by a fat geezer in red felt and not your parents.