It's been a pretty dull year for inflation. Oh, don't get me wrong, prices for some commodities have risen.

Take crude oil for example. Black gold's up 69% year-to-date. Broadly, however, commodity prices have ticked up only modestly. The Reuters Continuous Commodity Index, an equal-weighted amalgam of 17 commodities including crude oil, has barely managed a 6% return this year.

But rising prices are a consequence of inflation, not inflation itself. Inflation, in the traditional economic sense, represents the denigration of a currency wrought by oversupply. That old adage about "too many dollars chasing too few goods" fits in here.

Unfortunately, the Federal Reserve made it harder to gauge the growth in the supply of greenbacks since it stopped calculating M3, the broadest money indicator, a while back.

You can get a pretty good picture of the trend in the dollar's purchasing power by following our real-time monetary inflation indicator. It's published at the top of each "Desktop" column. We calculate the inflation rate by comparing the dollar against gold and the world's second-most-heavily banked currency, the euro (for more details, see "Computing Inflation In Real Time").

If you've watched the rate recently, you're probably bored with it. It's been locked in a trading range. This year, the rate's stuck at an average 8%.

U.S. Monetary Inflation

We've had a couple of false starts on the reflation trade this year, but no real follow-through. One day, of course, that will change.

That change is likely to be signaled by a sustainable break in the inflation rate above 9%. Keep your eyes peeled for that number. And keep your powder dry until then.