Under present circumstances, judging future changes in commodity prices is obviously an important part of any inflation forecast. As I noted, future markets generally are expecting these prices to flatten out and remain at around today’s very high levels. If this happens, then the effects of commodity prices on inflation will dissipate. In order to continue to put upward pressure on inflation—which, after all, is the rate of change of prices—commodity prices would have to do more than remain at today’s high levels. They would need to keep on rising.
While this seems unlikely based on experience in recent decades, we can’t rule out this possibility. Futures markets have been expecting a leveling out of most commodity prices for several years now, and they keep being surprised by ongoing increases. As I mentioned before, in part, this could reflect growing supply limitations on some commodities, especially oil. However, there also is the possibility that commodity prices could fall in the future as the economic weakness in the U.S. and slowing in Europe could spread to the rest of the world, reining in demand for commodities. I mentioned before that there is an usually wide spread in Blue Chip forecasts for real GDP growth—well, not surprisingly, the dispersion for inflation forecasts is also unusually large at the present time, perhaps reflecting these divergent possibilities.