European natural gas prices soared almost 40 percent on the risk of a global liquefied natural gas shortage. European wholesale power prices remain below the record highs of the energy crisis but have steadily climbed as the volatility in the international commodity spectrum underscores the fragility of the European energy system.

Unfortunately, the European Union bureaucrats declared the end of the energy crisis as if it were the result of decisive policy action, but the reality is that the energy problem in the EU was only diminished by purely external factors: a very mild winter and the decline in global commodity prices due to the central bank rate hikes. Thus, the energy crisis remains, and the problems of security of supply and affordability of the system persist.

Markets are pricing a rapid decline in inflation and the end of central bank policy normalization. However, there are two challenges ahead that we must consider.

The most important is that inflation is cumulative, and the year-on-year change between January and July was supported by the base effect. When the inflation rate used for the year-on-year change is high, even a persistent increase in prices looks like a “decline” in inflation. If I gain ten pounds one year and four the next, my inflation rate will fall, but I am not slimming. And prices continue to bite, hurting the economy and consumers.

The middle class in all developed economies is disappearing through a constant process of erosion of its capacity to climb the social ladder. This is happening in the middle of massive so-called stimulus plans, large entitlement programs, endless deficit spending, and “social” programs.

The reality is that those who blame capitalism and free markets for the constant erosion of the middle class should think better. Massive money printing and constant financing of larger government size in the economy with new currency have nothing to do with capitalism or the free market; it is the imposition of a radical form of statism disguised as an open economy. Citizens who hail the latest government stimulus plan fail to understand that the government cannot give you anything that it has not taken from you before. You get a $1,000 check, and you pay three times over in inflation and real wage destruction. That is why a group of economists and experts have launched the Honest Money Initiative. To stop the destruction of the fabric of the economy, the middle class, and businesses via constant debasement of the currency that governments monopolize.

Interventionists always blame inflation on everything and anything except the only thing that makes aggregate prices rise: Issuing more units of currency than the real demand. Seller inflation is the same excuse and fallacy as cost-push inflation. A way to confuse citizens and assign causation to something that cannot make aggregate prices rise.

Let us debunk some myths. No corporation or conglomerate can make aggregate prices rise. Some neo-Keynesians blame corporations for price increases, but that makes no sense. If corporations were able to make aggregate prices rise, the United States would have had elevated inflation for the past three decades. Corporations are the ones that lower prices faster because they can generate economies of scale, gain market share, and produce better goods and services at a lower cost using innovation and technology. There is no single corporation that has a market share large enough to make aggregate prices rise, and even less for a prolonged period. The reader may say that corporations work as an oligopoly, but if that were the case and they were stupid enough to increase prices for no reason, they would be able to affect one or two prices for a while until competition and technology wipe them out.