inflation

In the following post I list a number of risk factors which I believe investors should give serious consideration, but I do not for one second pretend for that list to be exhaustive. Neither should you read anything into the order of which…

Moody’s put Indonesia’s rating on review for possible upgrade. This is a stronger statement than the June move to positive outlook on the Ba2 rating (equivalent to BB), and we think an upgrade will be seen soon. Indeed, the agencies are…

Below are some monthly lists of items removed from the monthly Consumer Price Index Summary calculation and the excuses for doing so. (The lists were cut-and-pasted from the BLS website at the time. It looks as though the BLS only posts…

Part 1.  Will Europe face defaults? Its official – Spain and Portugal will need to be bailed out soon.  How do I know? In one of my favorite TV shows, Yes Minister, the all-knowing civil servant Sir Humphrey explains to cabinet…

By Vedran Vuk With consumer prices in China up 4.4% this October over last year, the country has taken another move to avert inflation: price controls. There’s just one problem. Thirty years ago this would have been a viable policy…

Emerging markets are seeing a lot of imported price pressures, causing their economies to overheat and increasing food price pressures. Rahul Bajoria, regional economist at Barclays Capital, sees strong food price pressures in the…

Randall Wray shows that quantitative easing will be ineffective except to the degree it can induce a shift in private portfolio preferences. He uses a recent post by hedge fund manager Warren Mosler to demonstrate that QE is the equivalent…

Ever since Fred Sheehan published his post on the bifurcated view on "The 'Flations", I have been using this as a baseline way of talking about prices. Easy monetary policy is geared to raising prices. However, if the secular…

China reported higher than expected CPI figures (4.4%) last week and many suspect that the official measure understates actual inflation.  There is much concern about the policies that China may implement to contain inflation in…

What accounts for the difference in inflation paths in the UK and the US?  In America, we have disinflation, causing the Federal Reserve to conduct a second round of quantitative easing. But in the UK, we have accelerating inflation.…