Hans-Werner Sinn (Hans-Werner Sinn) is the influential Munich think tank Ifo’s former head of the Forever Order Liberal Party. His career was motivated by a warning about inflation. Therefore, with German house prices rising by more than 5%, it is not surprising that he reappeared on our screen.

Fans will be happy to know that he has neither a beard nor a belligerent.

He is on TV.Berlin vigorously shook a bottle of Heinz’s best wine last week to prove that he was always right, low interest rates and bond purchases by monetary policymakers “carnival” Will trigger an inflation spiral. (For those who can’t stand the full 50 minutes, the bottle clamp is about the 14-minute mark.)

His meaning is already very clear. Policymakers have been shaking the bottle so hard that soaring prices are now being released like a big red ball, destroying the calm white plate of our lives when the European Central Bank was just a flash in the eyes of French bureaucrats. The end result is just like Germany The commentator-borrowing a brochure from Sinn-said, “Erst kommt gar nichts, und dann kommt ganz viel.”

This theory cannot withstand the reality that most of the current inflation in the Eurozone has already Rooted in supply chain bottlenecks. But we are not sure how you fight Sinn with food. Maybe an empty supermarket shelf? Or even a ketchup bottle with a particularly narrow end?

Although those dovish people Laugh now At the expense of Sinn, he was not the first to turn to condiments to prove economic views.

As early as 2010, Economist’s Sycamore Pillar He published his views on the ketchup theory of inflation, quoting Tim Lee of pi Economics, who described it like this: “The central bank keeps’shaking the bottle’ (that is, monetizing debt), but there is no ketchup (that is, inflation). ) Come out-so it’s harder to vibrate.”

Recently, Martin Sandbu of the Financial Times did what all people who think correctly would do wait, Use the theory explain Why does he think that once the supply chain barriers disappear, the ketchup nature of current price pressure may actually lead to deflation.

To be fair, inflation is obviously not a hamburger. At least the theory emphasizes, uh, the problem that kimchi policymakers face in measuring how much pent-up price pressure is.