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Exporting Inflation from China

Friday, September 28, 2007 | 10:46 AM

in Commodities | Data Analysis | Federal Reserve | Inflation | Politics

Speaking of Inflation, you can actually see the official inflation rate of China here:

Some of the actual data: Food inflation is running 18.2% year-over-year, led by meat and poultry (49%) eggs (23.4%) and vegetables (22.5%).

Health care in China was low (2.3%) -- hey, its a communist state, and those costs are fixed by the Central government.

Also low: Booze and cigarettes -- 1.7% year-over-year, (mostly because they do not carry the new ultra-premium vodkas we have here).

Some oddities:

Transportation & communication were negative. Why are these two lumped together? I strongly doubt that the price drops in telecommunication equipment offset the rise in Crude Oil and gasoline prices. Oh, wait, those prices are also fixed by the central planners. (Communism defeats inflation? How long can that last for?).

Residences gained 4.3%.

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There is a sad element to this: Why is it that Communist propagandists at the National Bureau of Statistics of China are at least as truthful about price increases, if not more so, than we are here in America . . .

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» Read It Here First: China's Next Big Export: Inflation from The Big Picture
Last month, we discussed Exporting Inflation from China. Time liked the post so much they more or less ran it in the magazine: China's Next Big Export: Inflation Demand from China, along with other fast-growing emerging economies, has driven up the pri... [Read More]

Tracked on Oct 16, 2007 9:01:16 AM

Comments

Actually, I think you're misreading the chart. It's actually much worse than that. It says "The same month last year=100". So food inflation is actually 18.2%, led by a whopping 49% inflation is meat and poultry. Total inflation was 6.5%.

The right column is the confusing part, but this is the average for the period Jan-Jul and is also set to 100 for the same Jan-Jul period last year.

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BR: Yeah, i caught that just as I clicked publish.

I used the same spreadsheet I used for BLS data, and inadvertantly compared the left and right columns.

I'll fix it up top . . .

Posted by: F | Sep 28, 2007 10:58:27 AM

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