Rising prices are not the cause, they are the symptoms of inflation, which is created by disorder in the money supply, manipulated by the same people. They were fighting themselves on the back of the people. And I wish somebody would explain to me why higher interest rates are supposed to be beneficial and higher salaries to be harmful to a growing economy. During the year 2000 these bankers were busy to take the money out of the pockets of the people so that they could spend less on consumption and more to the banks because there was supposed to be a danger of an overheating of the economy. Then, at the beginning of 2001, everybody was commenting on the deteriorating economy as a kind of disaster of nature and looking for ways to get money into the hands of the people so that they can spend more for consumption and stop the downslide.
Nobody talks any more about the promised soft landing.
The economy began to slide by at the beginning of 2000. Without the interference of the Federal Reserve, raising additionally interest rates, we probably would have had a soft landing. The price of gold has not moved for years in spite of the fact that there is more demand for gold than is being produced. In 1999 the relationship was 4.000 tons vs. 2.500 tons. The low price is devastating for South Africa and Ghana and millions of individuals.