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by mortenjorck 1274 days ago
To be clear, the article is not discussing the third derivative, but rather arguing that the standard “now versus one year ago” measure is heavily back-weighted due to factors early this past year. The second derivative is down!
2 comments

> due to factors early this past year

Is that like how it was convenient in the 2010’s when discussing “terrorist attacks on US soul” to conveniently leave out 2001 because it was an “outlier?”

It’s more like leaving out 9/11 when discussing the effects/impacts of the PATRIOT Act.

The consumer price index has been relatively flat since the Fed started raising interest rates.

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/consumer-price-in...

The generally quoted inflation rate compares now to this time last year – so until next June, it includes the increases that happened before the Fed decided there was a problem.

This is useful in a lot of contexts, but if you want to know whether prices will be higher next month, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to use a lagging indicator.

> The consumer price index has been relatively stable since the Fed started raising interest rates.

The PCE, which the Fed uses—not the CPI—as its inflation gauge for policymaking has not been flat (historically, the PCE and CPI have generally been pretty close, but the PCE shot up much more than the CPI in the recent inflation, and did not quickly drop and stay near zero monthly % change like the CPI in response to the Fed intervention [it was low in July and November, but not the intervening months.])

Is not? The title says, Inflation (first derivative) is falling (second derivative) much faster (third derivative) than most people know.