Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by gizmo686 1436 days ago
Most of the pre-war rise was recovering from the covid crash of gas prices. The price overshot its pre covid level a bit, but that can be explained through supply issues (you can't increase production on a dime; demand was difficult to predict; and suppliers prefer to under produce than over produce)
2 comments

We have a president who is hostile to oil. Let's ignore if that is a good / bad idea for moment.

It's been long enough that price of gas reflects those decisions. Except we've been drawing down our strategic oil reserves to keep prices cheap for the moment. So really it should be a lot higher.

Real pain will begin when the reserve runs out of good oil.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/the-us-is-dep...

Gas is pulling up the CPI right now, but it's always volatile. Shelter is slow, strongly linked to monetary policy, and the highest-weighted component in the CPI basket, and it's up 5.6% YoY, with a lot of inertia to keep growing. That suggests to me, in a back-of-a-napkin way, that about half of the current inflation is due to monetary policy.
Shelter tracks CPI less energy pretty closely, especially during the recent surge: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=RJqZ