Across the Middle East and North Africa, price rises are disturbing the efficient movements of the market, drawing the attention of governments to intervene, and harming the average consumer in the process. While nobody in the region is particularly fond of inflation, the causes and effects of it cannot be ignored and must be studied in a regional and global context. Many variables, including a growing appetite for commodities and natural resources by the developing world, a weak dollar to which many regional economies are pegged and tremendous growth rates of most economies in the region, are to blame. Consumers, businessmen, and central bankers alike are feeling the squeeze as the economics of prices are spilling onto the domestic scene of many countries. Citizens in the Gulf stand to benefit, or at least enjoy some respite, from the economic solution their governments know best: public handouts in the form of
