After yesterday’s champagne-popping as the FTSE-100 rolled past the 6,000 mark, share prices surged, and the Tory press hailed the New Year as the turning point of recovery, comes the cold truth of the next day’s dawn.   There is a very real risk that a febrile recovery in the UK-US will be killed off by sharply rising commodity prices reflecting an inauspicious conjuncture of climate change impacts, unusually cold weather and fast-rising demand in Asia.   It will push up CPI inflation, and if that triggers a rise in interest rates, all bets are off. Continue reading →