IndexMundi Blog

I just finished uploading January 2009 data to the historical commodity prices section. I noticed right away that the sharp fall of all commodity price indices that started in July 2008 seems to have stopped sometime between December of last year and January of this year. Take a look at the overall Commodity Price Index for example.

One data point does not a trend make, but January 2009 looks a lot better to commodity producers than December 2008.

One final note: February 2009 data will be available in approximately 30 days. I follow the IMF release schedule, which is not fixed.

Vox is a wonderful web site I found today full of interesting analysis and comments by some of the World’s top economists. I was happy to see that my alma matter is very well represented by Olivier Blanchard, Giuseppe Bertola,  Jeffrey Frankel, and others.

If you are paying particular attention to the explosive rise of commodity prices (see graph below), take a few minutes to read the articles written by Guillermo Calvo – Exploding commodity prices, lax monetary policy, and sovereign wealth funds – and by Jeffrey Frankel – An Explanation for Soaring Commodity Prices. They both suggest that commodity prices are not increasing simply because of soaring demand from China, India, and other fast-growing economies.