And greetings once again to you music lovers, thrill-seekers, conversationalists all across the fruited plain. Today’s op-ed come to us from Alan Blinder in the Wall Street Journal. Blinder argues we starting the new year with some great news; inflation has fallen dramatically…(WSJ)
As mentioned, the CPI inflation rate over the past 12 months has been an alarming 7.1%. But the U.S. economy got there by averaging an appalling 10.6% annualized inflation rate over the first seven months and a mere 2.5% over the last five. The PCE price index tells a similar story, though a somewhat less dramatic one. The 5.5% inflation rate over the past 12 months came from a 7.8% rate over the first seven months followed by a 2.4% rate over the last five.
Lest you think I’m performing numerical sleight-of-hand, the same phenomenon can and does operate in the opposite direction: Inflation can surprise you by leaping upward. It happened in 2021.