Submitted by 2point6billion.com Blog

The world is flat when it comes to inflation. As oil exceeded US$139/barrel, in the last week, truckers across Asia and Europe protested. The strikes arrested transportation links that bring food to people, leaving many more in the lurch.

Exerpts from a Reuters report say -   In Asia, governments are struggling to prevent rising prices making the burden on the public so heavy that it threatens political stability.

South Korea’s cabinet offered to resign in the face of huge street protests on Tuesday about the policies of its unpopular President Lee Myung-bak.

He said Asia’s fourth-largest economy could be heading into crisis because of surging resource prices and slowing growth. Producer price inflation in the world’s fifth-largest crude oil importer was near a 10-year high last month.

South Korean truck drivers voted on Monday to strike over rising fuel prices, ignoring a $10.2 billion government aid package designed to cushion the impact of the fuel cost surge.

Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi pledged 1 billion ringgit ($306.6 million) in extra spending for the politically key state of Sarawak, to shore up support there among lawmakers unhappy over a jump in fuel costs.

A decision last week to raise petrol prices by 41 percent and diesel by 63 further soured the mood and the opposition is calling for protests later this week.

In Hong Kong about 500 minibuses, lorries, garbage trucks and coaches staged a go-slow protest, crippling traffic in a demonstration calling for fuel taxes to be scrapped.

Communists burned tyres and blocked roads in parts of eastern India in protests at fuel price rises but elsewhere in the country calls for strikes were largely ignored.

India increased petrol and diesel prices last week by around 10 percent after the cost of fuel subsidies brought state oil companies close to bankruptcy.

In Spain, cars queued at petrol stations — 40 percent of which had run out of fuel in the worst affected area of Catalonia — and supplies of fresh food began to run low in some markets, Spanish media reported.

Portuguese drivers have joined the strike and there were also protests in France over the impact of record oil prices, now at highs of more than $139 per barrel.