Balancing Inflation and Growth Part 9 of 13
Balancing Inflation and Growth Part 9 of 13
Recent readings on inflation have not been encouraging. The rate of increase in the core personal consumption expenditures price index, or core PCE that is, what people buy, except food and energy was 2.2 percent over the 12 months ending in January. Yet, its headline counterpart commodity index trading, which includes food and energy, increased an alarming 3.7 percent over the same time frame. Both core and headline PCE figures have been following an accelerating trajectory over the past several months. If you annualized the change in the PCE over the most recent three-month period, for example, you’ll notice that the core rose 3 percent, while headline rose 5.4 percent.
Clearly, food and energy prices matter, as these differences make clear. The price index for food rose 4.7 percent over the past 12 months, a rate not seen since 1990. Through January, the PCE energy component was up roughly 23 percent over 12 months.
While some of the movement in core consumer price inflation represents pass-through of high energy prices to transportation services, for example we have also seen commodity derivative trading pickups in other components, such as recreation, education and personal care services, and upticks in components, such as apparel, that have historically exerted downward pressure on the price of the consumers basket of goods.
Balancing Inflation and Growth Part 2 of 13
Balancing Inflation and Growth Part 2 of 13
When I finished, Alan looked down the table and said, President Fisher, was that Henry V? Yes, Mr. Chairman, I replied. I know Ive reached retirement age, said the ancient chairman. I went to high school with that guy.
Would that we could today enjoy commodity trading courses such levity from the days when SIVs, CDOs, ARS and SLARS and VRDOsor the R or the S words, as in recession and stagflation were not yet part of the polite lexicon of monetary circles. These are not the happiest of times. These are, to put it euphemistically, challenging times for central bankers. We are confronted with the twin evils of slower growth and higher inflation, while also having to fight a banging hangover that resulted from allowing financial intermediaries to party on too hard for too long.
The monetary policy and regulatory frameworks that commodity future trading system appeared to serve us so well in past decades are being stress-tested in ways that few dared imagine during that bucolic period when many were lulled into assuming things would be forever NICE, as Mervyn King so memorably put it. We know now that a Non-Inflationary Consistent Expansion is not the steady state of nature. Neither is the Great Moderation of both the economy and financial market volatility.
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