Brace Yourself for a Sharp Rise in Inflation

It may seem strange to be worried about inflation in the midst of a global recession, a pandemic and huge political ructions in the U.S., but I strongly suspect that it’s about to pick up both soon and sharply. How fast this happens depends on how quickly the developed world recovers over the next few months, but pressures are building. As has been the case for many years, global inflation has “Made in Asia” stamped all over it. This time, though, that’s likely to be compounded by much greater supply constraints in the economy.

First, a little humility. Forecasting inflation is fiendishly hard. Generally, the best forecast is what inflation is at the moment. Central banks have been neither good at forecasting inflation nor creating it. This is because, in essence, classical economics largely assumes that, all things being equal, increasing the supply of money pushes inflation higher. And yet, after years of rate cutting, quantitative easing and so forth, the only thing that has gone up is asset prices. It has been Apple Inc., as it were, not apples.