Editor’s Note: “Don’t look now… but the BRICs are falling,” says The Sovereign Soceity’s global investment expert Mike Burnick.

It’s not just the credit crisis that has been keeping policymakers awake at night. A food crisis is sweeping the world like “a silent tsunami”, as Josette Sheeran of the World Food programme puts it, leaving widespread riots and rattled governments in its wake.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported another sharp increase in producer prices during March. Finished goods were up 1.1% and intermediate-level goods rose 2.3%, pushing the year-over-year rates to 6.9% and 10.6%, respectively, in the month of March — the biggest yearly increases in this price indicator since 1981.