People aren’t buying gas or groceries with “cheap money.”

Housing, business debt — sure. But there’s a long, convoluted path from cheap debt to inflation of consumer goods.

The thought process goes: Consumer goods like TV dinners are still based on things further up the supply chain like fertilizer. Normally you get inflation when there is a shortage of say crude oil, but when everything is running into random shortages companies get defensive and start trying to stockpile supplies.

Hypothetical example: If Dell wants another 2 weeks of GPU’s on hand from Random Supplier X, and Random Supplier X wants 2 weeks of chips for their GPU’s on hand from Nvidia, and Nvidia wants 2 weeks of refined silicon on hand from supplier Y, who wants to source 2 weeks of raw materials early that’s 2 + 2 + 2 + 2 = 8 weeks worth of demand of sand from some mine somewhere out of thin air. Which then dramatically bumps prices for sand and that trickles back down the supply chain.

However, higher interest rates should moderate how much each company in that chain stockpiles, which reduces the demand for sand even if the same number of computers are shipped either way.

Interesting. Thank you for that explanation. That makes a lot of sense.