Consumer spending – the driving force behind the U.S. economy – slowed in April. Soaring prices wiped out any benefit from the scant 0.2% increase in consumer spending in April, the Commerce Department announced.

‘Argentina’s foreign reserves…this is one of the main subjects of concern here in these times of uncertainty and political unrest,’ says Paola Pecora.

India’s wholesale price index rose 7.82% for in the week ended May 10, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry reported. It marked the 13th straight week that the inflation rate has been above the central bank’s 5.5% target, highlighting the increased pressures many developing nations are under given soaring commodities prices.

“When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but battalions…”

Hamlet

The core US inflation rate or Producer Price Index (PPI) — a measure of the prices of goods excluding food and energy  — rose 0.4% in April, double the increase forecast by economists.

This puts the core US inflation rate up 3% in the past year, the biggest year-over-year rise since late 1991.

The PPI figures are unlikely to affect the markets which, according to a report by MarketWatch, “don’t seem to trust the government’s inflation figures that show falling energy prices in a world of record crude oil prices.”

Is this the year gold breaks from its seasonal pattern and enjoys a summertime rally?

“Venezuela, one of Latin America’s most populist countries has a very high inflation rate, control on market prices and shortages. This seems to be a constant practice for countries with this type of regime, and even more so in this region where governments define this practice as “redistribution of wealth”. It seems like the only thing that they distribute is inflation,” says Paola Pecora.

Inflation, if you believe what the government tells you, ran at 3.9% in the 12 months ending this April, but was it more like 5% or even 10%?

According to CNN “part of the disconnect may be due to the fact that nondurable goods, such as food and gasoline, makes up only 12% of the Consumer Price Index (CPI), the main measure of inflation.

China’s foreign currency reserves soared to a world-leading $1.68 trillion at the end of March, and that has the government scrambling for ways to keep the torrents of incoming money from stoking an inflation rate that’s already at its highest in more than a decade.

“Inflation is back,” reports The Wall Street Journal.

But it’s complicated, says the paper, because today’s inflation is “coming at a time of sharply reduced interest rates in the US, the opposite of the usual response to rising inflaton.”

Consumer prices in the U.S., Europe and other rich countries are projected to rise 2.6% this year, the highest inflation rate since 1995, the International Monetary Fund said Wednesday.