The chart below reminds that this is definitely not your Grandfather’s Inflation. That scourge happened from approximately 1970 to early 1981 and was a shocking discontinuity from the pre-existing sound dollar world.
The latter was well represented by the 1951-1970 run of the producer price index for commodities, which rose by just 1.06% per annum. By contrast, during the 11 years ending in January 1981, wholesale commodity prices rose by nine times more or 9.05% per annum. So doing, soaring commodity costs cascaded down the supply chain into intermediate goods and finished products, triggering surging costs, wages and a 120% gain in the consumer price level over the course of the decade.
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