USA TODAY: ….Rising food and energy prices do indeed put a dent in your budget. But if you’re looking for inflation that parties like it’s 1975, you need to have rising wages, and that’s just not happening.
Instead, higher food and energy prices mean you’ll have to cut back on your spending elsewhere — which slows the economy and can drive other prices lower. Unless employment suddenly shoots up, or confidence in the dollar utterly collapses, the most likely outcome is stagflation — a slow economy plagued by higher commodity prices.
A survey by the Pew Research Center in March showed that 28% of those polled ranked inflation as the most worrisome economic problem the nation faces, beating out the federal budget deficit (24%) and financing and the housing markets (10%). Only the job situation (34%) outranked inflation as the nation’s biggest financial worry. … (more)
