Russell I know that you're obsessed with food inflation - for obvious reasons its politically important. However in most higher income countries (and China, which isn't such a poor country anymore) the food basket isn't such a great share of consumption, maybe 10-20% at most. For urban residents rent (or the infamous "owners equivalent rent") is a much higher share of expenditures.
In the US and Western world post-COVID rent has definitely soared, albeit with significant geographical variation. China & HK is a bit of an exception as there the property market has gone backwards for now. How does that play into your inflation calculus, does lower/(higher) rent give CBs more/(less) room for maneuver?
Hey Russell , if I wanted to control inflation I couldn’t have all these people spending Willy nilly. If I were going to roll out my own digital currency and curtail such spending I’d either need everyone to opt in or everyone to put their funds in a convertible vehicle voluntarily. Like one yielding 4.5% money market fund would make my life easy. (I didn’t read that fine print when I bought this mmf) Is this crazy talk or the what these spreadsheet MMT junkie’s dreams are made of.
Unsurprising as rice is the most labour intensive grain to cultivate.
What is more surprising is the uptick in Chinese rice imports, at current levels of per capita income around US$10k rice consumption per head usually declines due to Westernisation of diets.
The more likely explanation is that China is now hoovering up any grain (wheat/rice/soy/corn) for animal feed.
Top of the charts for food importation is quite troubling for China and inflation (from a Western perspective) as it creates a pro cyclical head wind. Also topically pushes trade in Yuan to which alone makes a currency devaluation less likely.
Russell I know that you're obsessed with food inflation - for obvious reasons its politically important. However in most higher income countries (and China, which isn't such a poor country anymore) the food basket isn't such a great share of consumption, maybe 10-20% at most. For urban residents rent (or the infamous "owners equivalent rent") is a much higher share of expenditures.
In the US and Western world post-COVID rent has definitely soared, albeit with significant geographical variation. China & HK is a bit of an exception as there the property market has gone backwards for now. How does that play into your inflation calculus, does lower/(higher) rent give CBs more/(less) room for maneuver?
Hey Russell , if I wanted to control inflation I couldn’t have all these people spending Willy nilly. If I were going to roll out my own digital currency and curtail such spending I’d either need everyone to opt in or everyone to put their funds in a convertible vehicle voluntarily. Like one yielding 4.5% money market fund would make my life easy. (I didn’t read that fine print when I bought this mmf) Is this crazy talk or the what these spreadsheet MMT junkie’s dreams are made of.
Unsurprising as rice is the most labour intensive grain to cultivate.
What is more surprising is the uptick in Chinese rice imports, at current levels of per capita income around US$10k rice consumption per head usually declines due to Westernisation of diets.
The more likely explanation is that China is now hoovering up any grain (wheat/rice/soy/corn) for animal feed.
Yet if this is to be believed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_meat_consumption) China is already more carnivorous than Japan per head, and inching in on South Korea!
God help us if the Chinese converge on US meat consumption per capita!
Top of the charts for food importation is quite troubling for China and inflation (from a Western perspective) as it creates a pro cyclical head wind. Also topically pushes trade in Yuan to which alone makes a currency devaluation less likely.
Perennial rice might fix a lot of this though