At social encounters, it is good to find a topic of common interest: the weather, say, or the latest celebrity mishap. When the G20 finance ministers meet on Friday in Paris they will want to avoid arguing too much about currency wars. Instead, they might want to chat about inflation. These days, it is almost everyone’s problem.
China’s 4.9 per cent consumer price inflation rate in January was a little lower than expected. But there were several “ouch” numbers: food inflation at 10 per cent; the non-food annual rate up from 2.1 per cent to 2.6 per cent in a month; producer price inflation of 6.6 per cent.
Against inflationary pressures of this sort, the 6.08 per cent Chinese policy lending rate looks inadequate. But in playing down inflation, the Chinese are in excellent company. The Bank of England has pretty much abandoned the near-term fight. The US authorities are mostly ignoring both the steady fall in the unemployment rate and the 4.1 per cent wholesale price inflation rate. And the European Central Bank has merely murmured while inflation rose from 0.9 per cent to 2.4 per cent in the past 13 months.