Forget about official inflation figures, which show consumer prices rose only 1.5 percent last year, says Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital.

“Inflation is here,” he tells Yahoo’s Tech Ticker.

“The first place you would expect to see it is in commodities, particularly agricultural commodities and precious metals. That’s exactly what we’ve seen.”

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What’s causing inflation? “It’s all because of (expanding) money supply, quantitative easing and stimulus,” Schiff says.

"This is the consequence of what the government has done to try to stimulate the economy by running huge deficits. The Fed prints money to buy up Treasurys. That expands the money supply and diminishes the value of money.”

So it’s we citizens who pay for government stimulus efforts. “We are paying for the government through a debased standard of living and a higher cost of living,” Schiff says.

China will also force inflation on the United States, he says. “The only way China can cure its inflation problem is to stop importing it from us, which means ... they have to let their currency rise,” he argues.

“When that happens, it will unleash an inflationary nightmare here in the United States.”

Schiff isn’t the only one worried about central-bank policy causing inflation.

"All central banks, in periods like this where you have inflationary threats that are coming from commodities, have to … be very careful that there are no second-round effects," European Central Bank chief Jean-Claude Trichet tells The Wall Street Journal.