28 Jul 2025

Heat Wave Inflation: A Decade Running Hot

Last week, I described Vanguard’s take on growth and inflation, and it got me thinking about inflation. In general, I was comforted by their views, which I characterized as ‘Steady as She Goes,’ but the inflation number started to bother me a little bit. Their forecast is for core Personal Consumption Expenditure (PCE), which is the Federal Reserve’s preferred measure for inflation, and Vanguard projected 3.0 percent for 2025 and… Read More

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19 Sep 2022

Core Inflation Knocks Market

Stocks sold off sharply this week, as noted above, mostly because markets had anticipated good news on the inflation front and didn’t get it. When I first saw the release, I thought it looked pretty good because the headline rate of inflation was only a tenth of one percent for the month, which brought the rolling one-year rate down to 7.8 percent.  While 7.8 percent is still far too high,… Read More

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25 Jul 2022

Looking at Inflation, Backwards and Forwards

Inflation is hard to measure, which is why there are many ways to measure it. In addition to the Consumer Price Inflation (CPI) indexes that I’ve discussed in recent months, there are also Producer Price Indexes (PPI), the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) indexes, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) purchased price index, the GDP price index, and the GDP Price Deflator index. Oh my! While I don’t intend for this letter… Read More

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