Quote Originally Posted by Gandalf View Post
Nah, those are government figures and cannot be trusted. I judge inflation by the real world and what we pay for everyday things. Take rice cake which jumped 25% after the Chinese New Year. That's significant. Or the cost of delivery chicken which is up 10% year in year out. Or the cost of barbecued pork that I ate last week up from 12,000 per serving to 14,000. It is a big jump. Then there is fuel which is racing back up again. The only area I would say inflation is static or going down is property and that is because they built 2 million homes in a handful of years and there is no demand. Everyday stuff is more expensive though. Food is crazy expensive here unless you are going to eat noodles and rice day in day out which means weight loss and disease. Fruit and veg is particularly costly.
Food and oil aren't included in inflation figurs because they're commodities. They go up and down due to supply and demand. So they can increase or decrease massively in price and it's due to bad harvests or gluts or increased production or low demand or whatever. It's not due to monetary policy, printing money or high levels of debt or whatever else you think is going to cause catastrophe. The goods and services that are affected by monetary policy are measured in the inflation rate and as you can see the inflation rate is very low indeed.

Now then, Italy. Surely the ladies and gentlemen who write whatever it is you read about finance and economics are hyperventilating about Italy? It is a massive problem. These people must be creating doom and gloom about something, what are they flapping about if it's not Italy. Greece?