In a daily analysis from last week, Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow Benn Still suggested that the United States is “exporting inflation worldwide.” The latest action by the US Federal Reserve may have staved off inflationary disaster domestically but only to the detriment of other nations who peg their currency to the dollar.

Venezuela struggled with inflation rates over 20 percent in 2007 (Bloomberg). Argentina and Bolivia face similar concerns. Official data puts Russian inflation for 2007 at nearly 12 percent (Forbes). Several Gulf Arab states also find themselves with inflation over or near 10 percent. In China, rates near 7 percent registered in December 2007 represent the highest inflation in over a decade. China’s Prime Minister Wen Jiabao recently announced Beijing would freeze short-term energy prices in an attempt to curb consumer price increases (NYT).

Rapidly rising prices for palm oil and other kinds of vegetable oils are having a huge impact in the developing world, where many families grow their own food but must purchase oil in which to cook it. As the International Herald Tribune reports, this increase in the cost of edible oils is only the most recent development in the emerging global problem of rising food prices.

The New York Times is producing a fascinating series of articles and multimedia examining the human toll, global impact and political challenge of China's epic pollution crisis.

Today the Economist posted a briefing on the 2008 Freedom of the World report published by the Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal, concluding that in recent years "African countries have made negligible progress liberalising their economies."

For the most part, although not without exception, the Heritage Foundation’s correlation between incomes per head and economic freedom holds good. Seven of the ten economically most free African economies (Mauritius, Botswana, South Africa, Namibia, Tunisia, Swaziland and Cape Verde) are, in fact, middle-income states. Uganda, Madagascar and Kenya, however, are very low-income countries.