Aug. 22 headline in Business Insider: “Inflation in Germany could hit a 70-year high of 10% amid Russia's natural-gas squeeze, German central bank chief says”.
Former President Donald Trump: "I told you so!"
In a Sept. 26, 2018 address to the UN General Assembly, the German delegation was laughing as Trump warned:
“Reliance on a single foreign supplier can leave a nation vulnerable to extortion and intimidation. That is why we congratulate European states, such as Poland, for leading the construction of a Baltic pipeline so that nations are not dependent on Russia to meet their energy needs. Germany will become totally dependent on Russian energy if it does not immediately change course.”
Any German who is not a masochist is likely not laughing now.
Germany's central bank chief, Joachim Nagel, told the Rheinische Post last week that the nation's inflation rate could surge by more than 10% this fall — the highest in seven decades — due to the country's energy squeeze.
Nagel's comments came after Russian state gas giant Gazprom announced on Aug. 19 it would shut down the Nord Stream 1 pipeline that Germany is so completely dependent on for three days. Gazprom said the pipeline needs maintenance and would be shut from Aug. 31 to Sept. 2.
Gazprom had already cut the pipeline's gas flows to just 20% of its capacity, citing technical issues.
"The issue of inflation will not go away in 2023," Nagel told Rheinische Post, according to an official transcript from the German central bank. "Supply bottlenecks and geopolitical tensions are likely to continue."
German industry leaders have warned of severe economic hardship should Russian gas be cut completely. To save energy, Europe's largest economy has already started turning off some heating and lights.
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