While every central banker and policy-leech spews forth the government-supplied statistics on inflation - noting that all is well, carry on - we recently pointed out that Gas Prices are their highest ever for this time of year [2]. Of course, the standard supply constraints (or technical) reasoning was applied to dismiss this as transitory (even though it has continued to rise since); but what is perhaps more worrisome is the broad-based nature of the real inflation that is leaking into our global supply chain. The 24-commodity heavy S&P GSCI index (widely recognized as a leading measure of general price movements and inflation in the world economy) has never been as high in early February as it is currently - ever. And with global growth stagnating at best, it seems a tough call to blame 'recovery' for this inflating (fastest pace in 8 years) raw material price leaking cost-push inflation (and margin-compression) into the real economy.
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and the fastest rise in 8 years...
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Charts: Bloomberg