{"id":26548,"date":"2026-03-17T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T03:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thebrokernews.ch\/?p=26548"},"modified":"2026-03-15T15:15:59","modified_gmt":"2026-03-15T14:15:59","slug":"the-fuel-under-the-economy-is-energy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thebrokernews.ch\/en\/the-fuel-under-the-economy-is-energy\/","title":{"rendered":"The Fuse Beneath the Economy"},"content":{"rendered":"
The fuse beneath the economy: Energy.<\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The global economy seems more complex than ever, but its foundation is surprisingly simple: energy. When energy becomes scarce, expensive or politically uncertain, the entire system comes under pressure. Rising prices coupled with weak growth bring back a word that many economists thought had long been consigned to the history books: stagflation. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Complex systems rarely fail suddenly. As discussed in my column last week, most of the time pressure builds quietly beneath the surface, invisible to most observers. When the explosion finally comes, it rarely creates the problem, it simply reveals it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the past months several questions have returned to economic discussions: inflation that refuses to disappear entirely, geopolitical tensions affecting energy markets, and growing debate about whether the global economy could once again face something many economists believed belonged to the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stagflation.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first time I encountered that word, I was about fifteen. Until then economics had barely existed in my world. At school nobody really taught it. In many ways that has not changed. Even today surprisingly few people can clearly explain what an economy is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My curiosity had been triggered a year earlier. In October 1987 global markets collapsed in what became known as Black Monday<\/a>. I was fourteen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At that age I could not fully understand what had happened, but the shock stayed with me. Something about the event suggested that markets were not the orderly systems they appeared to be. By the following year curiosity took over. At fifteen I began reading about economics seriously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What fascinated me immediately was that economics combined everything I enjoyed intellectually: history, mathematics, probability and even a little physics, all applied to something profoundly human.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the more I read, one question kept returning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is an economy?<\/strong><\/h6>\n\n\n\n

Economists usually begin with abstractions: GDP, Consumption, Productivity, Interest rates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But these are outcomes. They describe what happens inside the system, not what the system is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If we strip the concept down to its physical foundations, the answer becomes surprisingly simple.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An economy is a system that transforms energy into useful things<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Energy becomes motion, motion becomes work and work becomes production.<\/p>\n\n\n\n