Putin: US inflation result of ‘unprecedented’ money-printing
The Russian president says that attempts to blame Ukraine's turmoil for the West's skyrocketing cost of living amount to avoiding responsibility.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin (AFP)
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday that inflation in the US is the result of mistakes made by US financial authorities, which they have admitted, whereas in the EU it is the result of short-sighted energy policies in Brussels.
“Either way, it has nothing to do with Moscow or its actions in Ukraine”, he stressed.
In a TV interview that followed his meeting with the African Union head Macky Sall in Sochi, Putin added that attempts to blame Ukraine's turmoil for the West's skyrocketing cost of living amount to avoiding responsibility.
Almost all governments used the fiscal stimulus to help people and businesses affected by the Covid-19 lockdowns. Putin stressed that Russia did so "much more carefully and precisely," without disrupting the macroeconomic picture or fueling inflation. In the United States, by contrast, the money supply increased by 38% – or $5.9 trillion – in less than two years, in what he referred to as the "unprecedented output of the printing press."
“Apparently, the US financial authorities assumed that since the dollar is the world currency, as in the old days, this would dissipate throughout the world economy and would not be noticeable in the States. It turned out that this was not the case”, Putin said.
Putin went on to say that US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen did the "decent" thing by admitting she was wrong about inflation.
"So this is a mistake by the US financial and economic authorities; it has absolutely nothing to do with Russia's actions in Ukraine," he added.
Yellen told CNN on Tuesday that she did not fully understand the "unanticipated and large shocks to the economy that boosted energy and food prices, as well as supply bottlenecks" that drove inflation.
In the EU, Putin suggested that the inflation was caused by the European Commission's "short-sighted policy" in the energy sector in promoting the "green agenda" due to climate concerns.
The Europeans also rejected Russian proposals for long-term natural gas contracts, which drove up spot market prices, according to the Russian President.
“Everything is interconnected," Putin said, adding that rising gas prices "dramatically" increased the price of fertilizer, among other things, and rendered many industries unprofitable, pushing them to close.
The Russian president concluded by saying: “But we warned about this, and this has nothing to do with any Russian military operation in the Donbass, nothing to do with it at all.”
