To: prosperous who wrote (69867 ) 12/22/2010 3:23:02 AM From: elmatador Respond to of 217588 Could food inflation kill metal and oil inflation? This is a question that some traders and analysts in the crude oil, copper and other base metals markets are asking themselves as they fret over high inflation in China and the central bank’s response to it. Chinese inflation surged last month to 5.1 per cent year-on-year, well above Beijing’s informal target of 3 per cent. The rise has come largely on the back of surging food prices, such as vegetable oil. Crop prices, both in the Chinese local market and on the international markets, have continued climbing, increasing the possibility of further spikes in the inflation rate. The cost of vegetable oil, a staple in China’s expanding new middle class, and corn, a crucial livestock feed, continue to rise rapidly. So far the response of China’s central bank has been muted. Increases in bank reserve ratios have been used to damp credit expansion, rather than increasing in interest rates, as the bank did during the previous spike in agricultural prices linked to the food crisis of 2007-08. Beijing has also promised non-monetary measures, such as a clampdown on speculation in agricultural markets and the release of strategic stocks of crops, to fight the spike in inflation. But if prices continue to move higher, Beijing will need to increase interest rates, slowing down the overall growth of the economy and, with it, the demand for base metals such as copper and crude oil. More worryingly, a rise in interest rates – or a series of hikes – increases the chance of a policy mistake and a hard landing for the Chinese economy. Thus, the rally in agricultural commodities prices could very well end the rally in the rest of the commodities complex, hitting oil and base metals. There is a caveat. China is important to global commodities markets, but demand elsewhere has been recently surprisingly strong. Indeed, if anything, China has been largely absent as a source of consumption growth in copper and iron ore, with demand growth booming in Europe and the US for copper and Japan, South Korea and Taiwan for iron ore. Even so, the market is rightly concerned. The agricultural rally could very well derail the oil and metals rally.