Conspiracy theorists may well suspect that Russia may have attacked Ukraine on the joint orders of the US, the European Union and China to use the war as a cause for price rises around the world to be legitimized in order to absorb the trillions of dollars, euros and yuan that have been printed in recent years.
A clear example of the beneficiaries of the Russian attack on Ukraine is the President of the Bank of Latvia, Mārtiņš Kazāks. It is less than six months since Neatkarīgā on October 5, 2021, described an event he organized under the headline "Mārtiņš Kazāks promises economy will grow much faster than prices": "'Inflation is a bit higher, but we are talking about tenths of a percent,' Bank of Latvia President Mārtiņš Kazāks repeated ten times, demonstrating his loyalty to the Latvian government and the European Central Bank leadership." In reality, price increases are not tenths of a percent, but tens of percents, but the war has also absolved this man of responsibility for his earlier words. He can now explain to others and to himself, without remorse or public ridicule, that "the longer the war, the broader the sanctions. Hence, in the short term, energy prices are much higher. It is not possible to put very specific figures on inflation at the moment. Unfortunately, we will slip into the more than ten", he is quoted as saying on a TV program on March 14.
It is true that there is a war in Ukraine and that the US-led coalition is organizing an economic blockade against Russia, which also affects Latvia as Russia's neighbor. However, the inflation now acknowledged by Kazāks is not a consequence of this war. He is now merely legitimizing inflation rates that were already known or easily foreseeable in the autumn of last year. The aforementioned Neatkarīgā publication of October 5 included the then-current news that bread prices could soon rise by as much as a third and that the price of potatoes had already doubled. Waste disposal tariffs in Riga and the Baltic Sea Region were expected to double from January 1, and heating tariffs in Riga were expected to increase by 26.6% from September 1 and by a further 16% from November 1. Since then, the tariff has been increased in two more steps on March 1 and March 11. Only at first glance does it seem that it has become possible to write these increases off to the war. However, this is only an appearance, which is belied by the dates on which the decisions to raise tariffs were made public. In particular, the request by the Riga heating company to raise tariffs by a total of 11% was received by the Public Utilities Regulatory Committee on February 8 and granted on February 25, when the Russian attack had lasted only a few days and was not yet clear in the slightest, either in military terms or in the sense of economic sanctions. Among similar news from all over Latvia, the 64.4% increase in the heating tariff in Daugavpils stands out, but this news also dates from February 1, which cannot be linked to the war in the way that Latvian public officials and other propagandists would like to present it.
In fact, the link between inflation and war is that, with war as a cause, price rises around the world can be legitimized in order to absorb the trillions of dollars, euros and yuan that have been printed in recent years. These trillions, in turn, were and are still being printed to hide, at least temporarily, the fact that most countries, companies and households are only able to pay the interest on their debts and repay the principal at the agreed moments on condition that they receive further and ever-larger loans. Thus, there is no way to add up the total amount of loans from the money returned by debtors. The amount of loans must grow faster than the amount of debts repaid, which means that more and more money must be printed.
Hiding the actual insolvency of debtors also involves hiding inflation, because inflation makes the amount of outstanding debts ever larger. This can be illustrated by the very common example at the household level that people will stop paying the bank if they have to spend all their money on buying bread, i.e. the bare essentials of food, clothing, housing, transport, medicine.
The introduction of newly printed money gives only a moment of happiness when people (including companies, including countries) see an increase in income but do not yet - in many cases do not even want to - see an increase in expenditure coming that will deprive them of both their new income growth and their savings.
The excess printing of the euro in Latvia started in spring 2015 and the joy it brought could not last beyond 2019. This coincided with the moment when Covid-19 started to spread around the world.
Nothing is said here about the emergence of such a virus in the laboratory or in nature. It is about a campaign to combat a virus with measures that actually affected people's lives but had no impact on the spread of the virus.
Everyone is now ready to admit that the sealing off shop shelves of gloves, socks, boots, etc. with warning tapes had no impact on the virus, but it had a huge impact on people who were not allowed to buy the things they needed, regardless of the fact that they had the money. The euro, and likewise the other most visible currencies of the world, lost their purchasing power in the same way as hyperinflation causes. Then either everyone becomes millionaires and billionaires but cannot buy anything because either the goods cost even more millions and billions, or the goods are not in the shops at all, or the shops themselves are no longer there.
Since the second half of 2021, restrictions on trade and services worldwide have been phased out. So the barriers to excess money entering circulation have been removed. A short period of time was created during which people could still enjoy both the extra money and the permitted shopping, services and travel opportunities. Now it has been brought to an end in the usual way, expressed in Latvian as "a young officer has brought down a thriving business". Russian President Vladimir Putin himself volunteered to play this role. Perhaps it is a great honor to be counted as one who is capable of depriving the whole world of the prosperity it was promised as a reward for overcoming Covid-19 (vaccination). But it is all the more dangerous because he will now also have to play the role of the scapegoat mentioned in the Bible.
As long as the war continues, it can justify any rate of inflation, which is why the US and its allies are supplying Ukraine with just enough weapons in terms of quantity, power and importance to ensure that Ukraine does not lose the war but still fails to win. Also noteworthy is China's ability to express itself so smoothly that its officials are quoted with equal enthusiasm by both Russian and Ukrainian propagandists.