Central banks weaponize inflation narratives to normalize austerity amid structural inequality and climate debt crises
Original framing: “Central banks prepare for a long war” — Financial Times
The 'long war' framing echoes the Volcker Shock of 1979-82, which crushed labor power to restore capital profitability but deepened inequality. Structural adjustment programs in the 1980s imposed similar austerity on Global South nations, leading to decades of debt crises and social collapse. Central banks have historically acted as enforcers of financial orthodoxy, often at the expense of democratic governance and ecological stability.
The 'long war' narrative of central banks is a disciplining myth that obscures how monetary policy has long served as a tool of financial extraction, from Volcker's 1980s shock therapy to today's austerity regimes.
This framing ignores the historical complicity of central banks in perpetuating colonial debt structures and fossil fuel dependency, while excluding Indigenous, Global South, and marginalized voices that offer alternative economic logics. The solution lies not in tweaking inflation targets but in dismantling the extractive paradigms that treat Earth systems and human labor as collateral for financial speculation. By centering Indigenous stewardship, democratic control of money, and climate-adaptive finance, we can transform monetary policy from a weapon of inequality into a tool for collective flourishing—where Coyote's trickster energy exposes the absurdity of treating abstract financial metrics as sacred, and Hermes' cunning is redirected toward ecological and social repair.