Uddrag fra Bloombergs John Authers:
As the start of the month brings its usual deluge of data, it may be best to look first to the East. China has an inflation issue of its own, and it could drive the rest of the world.
The country’s latest PMI survey of supply managers showed that the number concerned about rising input prices was the highest in a decade:
Unlike previous periods of heavy producer price inflation, however, this time there is no particular expansion in consumer prices as yet. The gap between China’s PPI and CPI is its highest since the early 1990s:
Logically, this can only be dealt with in two ways. Either companies can increase prices, meaning higher consumer price inflation in due course (classic cost-push), or they can eat the higher input costs, and suffer a fall in profits. Neither option is appetizing. It should be no surprise that prices are rising, however: Last year saw massive Chinese demand for industrial metals, as the leadership pressed the customary pedals to reignite growth. This chart shows the volume of aluminum and copper imports over the last two decades:
In terms of the amounts of metals consumed, then, this was a boom even greater than the splurge of spending with which China helped lift itself (and much of the rest of the world) out of the global financial crisis in 2009.
