Today’s inflation figures manage to not surprise on two counts.

1. Both RPI and CPI price inflation are up. RPI to 5.0% and CPI to 4.4%.

2. When interviewed, the designated Government wonk waffles and then defaults to the “Well, it is much less than the early 90s” shtick.

Firstly, get some new material already.

Secondly, how about comparing like for like.

None of the interviewers ever ask any of these Government automatons how this secular bull for RPI inflation, which started in 2001, compares with the last one, which ran from 1959 to 1975.

If they did, they’d come up with this:

When you compare the blue column of the 1959 secular bull with the green line of the 2001 secular bull, you can see that performance is much of a muchness. The previous one was more volatile. The current one seems more controlled. Generally, they are both bouncing around similar ranges, with a slight bias to the upside.

Putting the issue of the potential of a credit contraction induced long-term deflation to one side for the moment, as that is the subject of another post, what the above chart tells us is that price inflation is performing as expected. That it is where you’d expect given that it is almost six-and-a-half years since the secular bear in RPI inflation ended.

Bad news for professional obfuscators. Potential good news, and opportunities, for those with an eye beyond 2009 if the secular bull remains intact.