Worthless Headline of the Day

CNN's Money site wins today's Most Worthless Headline of the Day award with this link on their homepage: Prices up in latest inflation read. Really, you don't say? Whoever wrote that must have a firm grasp of the blatantly obvious.

To be fair, that's the link displayed on their homepage, not the actual headline of the article.

Is Inflation Moderating?

Beginning with the March, 2007 FOMC statement, the Fed has stated that its primary concern is that inflation will not moderate as expected. The FOMC statement and minutes from the May, 2007 meeting and a CNBC interview with Chicago Fed President Michael Moskow on Friday reiterate this concern.

This suggests the inflation measure(s) the FOMC consults when determining monetary policy are at the upper end of their (collective) comfort range. The two charts below (click for larger image) show headline/core CPI and PCE inflation from 2000 to the present. Contrary to traditional headline/core inflation measures, the core inflation measures created by two regional Federal Reserve Banks show that inflation has not fallen from its levels of 2005 through early 2006.



Both year-over-year CPI and PCE headline inflation have decreased significantly from their levels of 2005 through early 2006. Compared to the same historical period, both measures of PCE core inflation have barely budged, and all measures of CPI core inflation have risen.

Both the PCE less Food & Energy and the Dallas Fed's Trimmed Mean PCE inflation measures have declined slightly since their respective peaks in late 2006. The Trimmed Mean PCE has fallen slightly less, however. Also worth noting, the spread between PCE less Food & Energy and Trimmed Mean PCE seems to be a pretty steady 20-30 bps.

CPI inflation is more interesting. CPI less Food & Energy inflation has fallen from its late-2006 peak of nearly 3% to less than 2.3% in April, 2007. However, 16% trimmed mean inflation has only fallen from 2.9% to 2.75% over the same period. Further, median CPI inflation remains near its levels (3.5%) of late 2006.

Moskow said, "The last quarter, GDP growth was very low – six-tenths of a percent. That’s history now. This quarter should be much stronger and, as we move through this year into next year, I see us moving toward potential growth, or long-term trend growth, in the economy." But if productivity continues falling and wage growth continues accelerating, I'm not sure what the Fed expects will contain inflation pressures. Then again, maybe that's why the FOMC's primary concern is inflation failing to moderate as desired...

I'll provide an update when May's CPI data come out on 6/15.

Inflation and the Fed

In this morning's commentary on The Big Picture, Barry Ritholtz writes:

Of course, many pundits, traders and investors -- and a goodly part of the Federal Reserve -- have convinced themselves that there really wasn't any inflation, ...

I agree with Barry regarding the many pundits, traders, and investors that have convinced themselves that there really wasn't a reason to worry about inflation (just look at the stock market action of the past few months), but I disagree that many Federal Reserve policy-makers are not concerned about inflation.

I know I've said it before on Barry's blog, but I'll say it again here: I worked at a Federal Reserve District Bank in 2004-05 as an economic research analyst - assisting the economists with their research.

There was much discussion regarding the measurement error of core CPI beginning in early 2005. That's about the time the Cleveland Fed came out with their median CPI measure, and the Dallas Fed - whose head of research is mentioned in Barry's post - created their trimmed mean PCE measure. Furthermore, the FOMC minutes have stated for some time that the main concern of the Fed is that inflation will fail to moderate as expected (i.e. inflation - by whatever measure they're now using - is above their comfort zone).

I'm not aware of the evidence Barry has seen that suggests that a good part of the Federal Reserve have convinced themselves that there is no inflation. One could argue that - given inflation data - the Fed should raise rates, but this is what is discussed/argued in FOMC meetings.

UPDATE:
Here's an interesting excerpt from the Reuters article referenced in Barry's post:

On the other hand, Rosenblum said that because the Fed relies on a number of different measures of price pressure, there was not much risk the flaws in core inflation would translate into a policy mistake.

"The fact that core is misbehaving now because food and energy are moving in one direction instead of up and down is not all that troublesome to me because we have the good sense to look at the wide range of indicators out there," he said.