Inflation story set to continue

Andrew Clare, financial economist, says the broad-based increase in prices across the globe has in many cases been underestimated because people have been looking at the wrong prices, or emphasising one set of prices over another. A key example is oil, which, while it has almost doubled in price this year alone – before falling back in recent weeks – is still worth much less per barrel in real terms than during the oil price shocks of the 1970s. Instead it is metals and shipping freight rates that are really spurring on global inflation, with freight rates up 275% since January 2002, ...