World Development Report 2008

World Development Report 2008 forecasts a gloomy picture about food grain availability in the world. It says grain production must increase by 50% in order to avert a food crisis. This clearly means that going forward, food price led inflation will only increase, thus making life very difficult for everyone from central banks to common man on the streets. This is bad news from monetary policy point of view as so far central banks especially U.S. Fed has so far only concentrated on supplying cheap money into the financial system thereby creating huge bubble in every asset namely Real Estate, Stocks, Commodities, they have so far ignored threat of rising inflation globally for the sake of protecting economic growth. All this will fall apart if inflation gets out of hand, worse affected will be people way down the wealth pyramid. Financial markets too will not take this situation kindly as threat to soft rest rates will increase and hence sharp corrections can be expected at those junctures. It will be very wise to get long on those agri commodities which are facing accute shortage and are expected to continue for long time to come.