Stagflation is a very scary thing - it is what killed Keynesian Economics and, later, ushered in the New Classicals, don't you know?

Peter Schiff pedals fear. A current example, courtesy of Tyler Durden:

Doug, welcome to The Peter Schiff Show.

Doug Casey: Thanks, Peter. It's my pleasure.

Peter: So in particular about your movie, which I thought was well done, the story that was most compelling to me was the interview with the gentlemen from Zimbabwe who had lived there most of his life.

Read no further. All you need to know is that we are all going to turn into Zimbabweans any day now.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

Possibly related, from Wolfgang Münchau:

The wacky economics of Germany's parallel universe - FT.com

The Germans have a name for their unique economic framework: ordoliberalism. Its origins are perfectly legitimate - a response of Germany's liberal elites to the breakdown of liberal democracy in 1933. It was born out of the observation that unfettered liberal systems are inherently unstable, and require rules and government intervention to sustain themselves. The job of the government was not to correct market failures but to set and enforce rules.

After 1945, ordoliberalism became the dominant economic doctrine of the centre-right. In the 1990s, the Social Democrats started to embrace it, culminating in Gerhard Schröder's labour and welfare reforms in 2003. Today the government is ordoliberal. The opposition is ordoliberal. The universities teach ordoliberal economics. In the meantime, macroeconomics in Germany and elsewhere are tantamount to parallel universes.

Also this, from Friday's newsroom.

High inflation (i.e., living costs) plus high unemployment is a recipe for downsizing the economically relevant population. If that downsizes reproduction as well...

The Austrians are quite into extra-academical forces already:

Forget Orwell and Rand, we've gone to full on Plato | First Rebuttal

Plato provides the arguments for the philosopher kings. He also describes various levels of reality, arguing that each societal demographic must live within the reality level delegated to them. He argues each demographic has a limited intellectual capacity and thus can only handle the reality level provided to them. With the philosopher kings being the only societal demographic with the right to and capacity for absolute truth. Likewise, the philosophers kings in the world we find ourselves today control each and every aspect of life including our subsequent perception of the world. There is no such thing as happenstance. The market moves a certain direction not because of unexplained market forces but because the philosopher kings have made it so [...]

The facts are we will never know the facts. We will know but a shadow of truth as ascribed to us by the philosopher kings as described by Plato's Cave Parable. This is how a handful of men and women control billions of people, the same way 20 cowboys control 30K head of cattle. We are provided food, shelter, safety and fear and in return we are provided a certain reality from which we must live. So long as we remain within our respective realities we will be granted comfort.