GERMAN FACTORIES HIKE PRICES BY ALMOST 50 PERCENT

Germany’s manufacturers jacked prices for their products 45.8 percent in September, year over year, continuing the string of increases made in recent months.

Compared to August, September’s prices rose 2.8 percent, the country’s Federal Statistics Office reported.

“August and September 2022 were the highest Increases in producer prices compared to a month in the previous year that have been measured since the survey began in 1949,” the agency said in announcing the price rise. 

Rising energy costs are the key driver of the increases, the statistics agency noted, adding that electricity costs 259.8 percent more for redistributors than a year earlier. 

So-called producer prices are a leading indicator of rises in consumer price indexes. Germany’s annual inflation rate reached 10 percent in September. 

TREND FORECAST: As we report in this and previous Trends Journals, the higher inflation rises and the more people that are put out of work, the higher the tensions will rise. (See “PROTESTS BREAK OUT IN GERMANY OVER ENERGY PRICES, WAR”). 

And today, Germany ramped up the Ukraine War which is responsible for the rising energy prices as a result of the sanctions they and other NATO members and the United States imposed on Russia. German President, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, went to Kyiv today to promise more aid from Germany to help Ukraine defeat Russia and to assure Berlin’s continued support.

And as for the protests rocking through Germany because of the sanctions that have driven up energy prices to historic highs, he told his countrymen who have had to limit their energy consumption and heating temperatures due to an energy crunch sanction on Russian energy imports, to “look through the eyes of the Ukrainians for a moment.”

Therefore, we forecast, considering such a statement, that protests will increase in Germany and throughout Europe until high inflation and high energy prices are subdued.