Recent riots in North Africa and the Middle East are and will continue to have a harmful impact on the private and public sectors in the United States. Egypt’s collapse has become the “Tipping Point” of a systemic contagion growing throughout North Africa and the Middle East, the likes of which we have not witnessed since World War II. Indeed, the turbulent geopolitics of this region of the world will no doubt continue into the foreseeable future.
So, what in the world does all this chaos have to do with the SHE professions? Actually, this chaos presents SHE professionals with an opportunity to break out of their technocratic, compliance-driven mindset in performing SHE work and start thinking differently. Whether you know it or not, your organizations and employees are feeling the pain of rising costs and inflation. For instance, last October, Casey Research published the following chart depicting the “Real Cost of Living.” [i]
According to the latest Consumer Price Index (CPI-U) data published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics for January 2011, the CPI-U was 1.6%. [i] Obviously, there are a multitude of reasons, not the least of which is politics, that our government’s CPI-U is reported so much lower than what the real costs of products are in the marketplace. Have you noticed the prices of food and gasoline soaring in the past year?
From a SHE professional’s perspective, note the explosion in the price of commodities, namely heating oil, gasoline, natural gas, copper, silver and gold. Raw agriculture costs are skyrocketing. These data reflect conditions in October of last year. As of this writing, oil prices are at or above $100/barrel compared to the low $80s in October 2010. Forecasters predict gasoline to be well above $4/gallon before year-end. Virtually every business has to purchase these commodities in order to operate. In part, this is the reason companies are sitting on large amounts of cash.
Another benchmark indicator to track is the St. Louis Federal Reserve’s Adjusted Monetary Base, which depicts the amount of money in circulation as illustrated in the following two charts. [ii] Simply stated, the more paper money in circulation the less your dollar is worth or, in other words, more paper money stimulates higher inflation.