Official: France’s Christine Lagarde is still mad

Duerrr….

On Christmas Eve, as most people were looking for taxis to help them avoid icy skids and breathalysers, Bloomberg posted this gem:

‘The Frankfurt-based central bank will keep its interest rates unchanged throughout 2011 amid low inflation, said 12 of 17 economists in a Bloomberg News survey.’

Today, the same site observed:

‘‘The annual rate of inflation in the single currency area rose to 2.2% in December, its highest in two years. For the first time since November 2008, the reading was above the European Central Bank’s ceiling of “close to, but below, 2%.”

For those wise folks without the time to calculate the size of this error in expectation, the ECB’s inflation forecast is roughly 17% adrift…and we’re 20 hours into the official working year.

But nil desperandum, because Christine Lagarde is on the case. She told Der Spiegel yesterday that, ‘ EU states would have to harmonise not only their national budgets, but also their economic policies. For example, Lagarde proposes that if a country wants to improve its balance of trade by exporting more, it must first “gain the consent of the others” within the group of EU governments.’

The woman is deranged.

As for the broader Trichet Plan, it already looks more like the Kaiser’s 1914 Schlieffen Plan: bogged down in the mud after less than a day. If this trend continues, inflation will be 4509% by next October when (it is rumoured) the ECB boss will be asked less than politely to stand down.

Now according to the BBC,  folks who don’t want any part of this gathering of the clowns are insane. It truly beggars belief than an adult person running the financial affairs of a top nation like la belle France could be that eye-rollingly stupid. Harriet Harman would be judged a Nobel prize-winning economist by comparison.

I suspect she has compromising photos of Sarkozy reading a book, but I could be wrong.