What's the biggest economic topic for 2008? In a word, inflation. From absolute obscurity only a few quarters ago, inflation has come raging forward to command the full attention of China's policy makers, global investors and even casual observers as “the” issue of the moment. Definition: ‘Inflation is the loss in purchasing power of a currency unit such as the dollar, usually expressed as a general rise in the prices of goods and services.’ Today, inflation continues to be blamed on private greed, while governments still seek to restrain it by decree, sometimes even devaluing their currencies as they do so in order to make there exports cheaper and thus create demand. However for most companies, operating and financing costs rise due to devaluation-created inflation, stealing back any initial competitive gains. In the news media, discussion of inflation often takes a ‘bottom up’ view. Each month's change in any given price index spills into every n...
Musings on design and finance