Inflation: As ‘Contained’ as an Arrow From a Bow
Michael Ashton | Feb 19, 2012 12:26AM ET
Is 15 months in a row of rising core inflation ‘contained?’
Year-on-year core CPI has now risen for 15 consecutive months. At some point, it will seem reasonable to let it have a month off, but until now it hasn’t needed it. Fifteen months in a row. That’s impressive. It’s so impressive, in fact, that it hasn’t happened since 1973-1974, when prices were catching up from the failed experiment of price controls imposed by President Nixon in 1971-73. Core inflation has never, in the history of the data (which exists since 1957), accelerated for 16 consecutive months. So, next month we have a chance for a record!
Headline inflation was softer-than-expected by 0.1%, even as the NSA CPI index itself came in higher than-expected. As I pointed out this article by economist John Cochrane.
Fed economists also feel strongly that “well-anchored inflation expectations” means that they can ignore 15-month trends in core inflation, despite the fact that by Chairman Bernanke’s own admission we aren’t really very good at measuring inflation expectations (to be kind).
They have time. The Fed has recently begun to treat 2% (on core PCE, not core CPI) as more of a floor than a target, so it will be some months, even if core inflation doesn’t pause for a month or two pretty soon, before the Committee starts getting at all warm under the collar about inflation. Even then, they are extremely unlikely to take steps to reduce liquidity while Unemployment remains high. The Fed is in a political bind, and the only easy path for them is to “see no evil” on inflation while hoping that Unemployment drops swiftly enough for them to act before prices really get out of hand. We will see.
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