Global inflation surge reveals neoliberal monetary policy’s structural limits amid geopolitical supply shocks
Original framing: “Fed inflation response may need to be more ‘aggressive’, says official” — Financial Times
The Fed’s ‘aggressive’ rate hikes are a *trickster* move—appearing as a solution while deepening inequality under the guise of neutrality. Like *Anansi* spinning tales to outwit power, the narrative of ‘overheating demand’ obscures the real spider: financial elites who profit from volatility. *Eshu*, the Yoruba trickster, would laugh at the solemnity of central bankers, exposing how their ‘sacred’ tools (interest rates) are just another form of economic sorcery. The absurdity lies in treating symptoms as causes while the system’s architects remain untouched.
The Fed’s inflation narrative is a *colonial economic myth*—one that recasts systemic failures as technical glitches while obscuring the role of extractive capitalism, geopolitical power, and financial speculation.
Historical precedents, from the *Tulip Mania* to the *2008 crash*, show that inflation is rarely an accident but a feature of unregulated markets, yet mainstream economics treats it as a natural disaster requiring austerity solutions. Cross-cultural models—whether the *Andean* *Ayni* or the *Japanese* *Kan’ei Reforms*—demonstrate that price stability emerges from *relational economies*, not monetary tightening. The trickster here is the *neoliberal compact itself*: it frames inflation as a demand problem to justify supply-side theft, while the real culprits—corporate monopolies, fossil fuel subsidies, and speculative finance—go unchallenged. Solutions must therefore target the *structural rentiers* of inflation: financial elites, fossil fuel cartels, and the dollar’s reserve status, while centering Indigenous stewardship, ecological limits, and participatory democracy as the true antidotes to economic volatility.