First glimpses of inflation

Price inflation is coming primarily from upward global pressure on commodities like the multiple grains that go into food production as well as heating oil and gasoline that power the world's growing economies.

It's also being driven by a weak dollar, which has continued to fall in value as the Federal Reserve has printed more and more money to pay for programs it hopes will stimulate growth...

So even if measures like the Consumer Price Index and the tally of food prices from the Bureau of Labor Statistics don't outwardly show inflation yet, it won't be long...

Indeed, the surge in commodities has been parabolic.  The Standard & Poor's GSCI agricultural commodities index is up 25 percent for the year and 16 percent in the last quarter alone. Among the big gainers: cotton (90 percent for the year), coffee (45 percent) and Kansas wheat (31 percent). Sugar's price has zoomed 26 percent in the fourth quarter, while corn, which is used to make so many other products, is up 20 percent for the year...

Yet BLS [Bureau of Labor Statistics] data show moves only in select areas when it comes to what consumers see on their grocer's shelves.

A loaf of bread, for instance, cost $1.38 in September, up just 2 cents since January. Ground beef also was up only a few cents, to $2.30 a pound, while eggs actually fell 3 cents to $1.75 a dozen.

On the other hand, butter was the big gainer, jumping to $3.57 a pound, a 29 percent increase for 2010. Coffee rose 36 cents a pound to $4.17, a 9.5 percent gain, while pork chops jumped a quarter a pound to $3.34, an 8 percent increase.

Leibtag confirmed it would be dairy and beef where consumers would get hit hardest, while things that aren't consumed directly but are used to make other products will take longer to have an impact.

"Our forecast for right now is that beef and pork products specifically will be on the higher end of the range," he says. "There are going to be impacts down the road as well for cereals and grains. It just takes longer to get through the system."

The above comments reflect the opinion of one columnist at CNBC; As a reminder, it has been said that if you line up all the economists in the world end-to-end, they would still point in different directions...