Protests Start in Europe as Belgium Prime Minister Warns that the European Economy will Come to “Full Stop” in a “Few Weeks”

Protests are starting all across Europe due to rising energy costs, and this is probably just the tip of the iceberg as leaders all across Europe are warning that a total economic collapse may be imminent, as they prepare for massive social unrest in the weeks ahead. Belgium Prime Minister Alexander De Croo is one of the latest leaders to sound the warning, as he stated in an interview with Bloomberg News: "A few weeks like this and the European economy will just go into a full stop. Recovering from that is going to be much more complicated than intervening in gas markets today. The risk of that is de-industrialization and severe risk of fundamental social unrest. I honestly do not see any other choice than doing market interventions. We don’t get a second chance to prove as 450 million Europeans that we take things in our hands. What you are seeing today is a massive drainage of prosperity out of the European Union." "Intervening in gas markets" of course means doing just what European governments and the U.S. government have been doing for the past several years, which is having their Central Banks create more money to bail out failing industries and send "stimulus" checks to people. There is just one glaring problem with this strategy: it won't produce more needed energy, and it will cause inflation, possibly hyperinflation, so that the cost of everything else, including food, will skyrocket out of control. It is akin to pouring gasoline on a fire and hoping it will put it out. So people are going to suffer either way, and they are going take out their frustrations on the government. And while we have seen massive protests in the past year or so over COVID measures, we have yet to see the kind of social unrest that will occur when people cannot buy food and face starvation.

European Metal Producers Warn that Industry Collapse is Imminent Due to Energy Costs as Many Plants Shut Down

"We call on European and national leaders to look at all available options for safeguarding our companies and their future." That is the desperate plea from 40 CEOs representing Europe's largest non-ferrous metals producers, who are urging emergency EU action to prevent permanent deindustrialisation from spiralling electricity and gas prices. Critically they warn that "50% of the EU’s aluminium and zinc capacity has already been forced offline due to the power crisis." The world's largest steelmaker, ArcelorMittal, released a statement Friday about shutting down two plants and idling one.  Europe's top steelmaker said two plants in Germany (one in Bremen and the other in Hamburg) would be partially closed at the end of September. A plant in Asturias, Spain, will also be idled.  ArcelorMittal blamed the coming smelter shutdowns on "the exorbitant rise in energy prices," which is devastatingly impacting the company's "competitiveness of steel production."