31 May Elites and their non-apologies
Image by Daniel Agrelo from Pixabay
“Huw Pill, the Bank of England’s chief economist, took a tactless approach last month to explaining life’s realities amid high inflation, saying that people should simply accept that they are now worse off than they used to be. But after resounding criticism, Pill apologized for his remarks this week—kind of. . . .
Pill attempted to make amends during a virtual Q&A session Monday evening, where he conceded his word choice was less than ideal. But while he took responsibility for his ‘inflammatory’ remarks, he also painted himself as a messenger with the difficult task of relaying a reality that is almost impossible to sugarcoat.
‘If I had the chance again to use different words I would use somewhat different words to describe the challenges we all face,’ he said. ‘Although we have some difficult messages to bring. I will try and bring those messages in a way that is perhaps less inflammatory than maybe I managed in the past.'” –https://finance.yahoo.com/news/economist-said-brits-accept-worse-204708673.html
In other words: I said what I said and I’m just sorry for the backlash over it.
Hmm. That sounds a lot like another person we observed recently . . .
“After initially saying she would ‘not be dissuaded by a 90-second clip taken out of context,’ the CEO of MillerKnoll told staff Tuesday that she now understands that her wording ‘seemed insensitive.'” –https://www.vice.com/en/article/ak3gy8/the-pity-city-ceo-is-sorry-now
Sorry that y’all snowflakes got offended by my “Pity City” tirade because someone leaked it to the media. 😒
“Annual inflation in the U.K. is currently 10.1%, with food and drink prices especially high at 19%, so it’s unsurprising that Pill’s comments last month largely fell on flat ears. Even Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey stepped up last week to reassure Brits that the central bank was ‘very sensitive to the position of people, all people, but particularly people on lower incomes.’ He also admitted Pill’s choice of words was ‘not the right one.'” -Yahoo Finance, Ibid.
You can bet that inflation is similarly bad here in the US even though The Fed is trying to convince us otherwise.
“In his apology on Monday, Pill said he and the central bank were well-aware ‘we live in difficult and challenging times,’ while acknowledging that the problems of high inflation are ‘particularly acute for some parts of society.’
But he also reiterated that part of his job was to break these hard truths to the public. Pill insisted it was ‘important’ to deliver messages on the realities of inflation in a ‘coherent and robust way,’ while also suggesting the ‘viral response’ to his earlier response had not been helpful in managing the central bank’s communication of inflation.” -Yahoo Finance, Ibid.
“Particularly acute for some parts of society.” You can almost picture him saying it with his nose stuck in the air. In the documentary The Rise of the Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else that I discussed on my podcast, one of the points made is that the elites in the US have more in common with the elites in London, Paris, Mumbai, and so on, than they do with other Americans. Their lives and lifestyles are so very different from the working class that they just don’t have much in common with fellow countrymen. These wealthy fat cat bankers are so far removed from the daily realities of what inflation is doing to average folks that they can’t fathom what it’s like. And what’s more – they DGAF. So they offer up these half-assed “apologies” when they get bad press and nothing ever really gets solved.
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