Hacker News Reader

Comment by slaymaker1907 | Hacker News Reader

slaymaker1907·

MoM inflation is still unfortunately 0.4% which is about 5% annualized. I think it's unfortunate that reporting focuses around yearly inflation which isn't really useful for talking about inflation in the moment.

View on HN

Interesting, that does seem like a more useful metric. Where do you find that data?

It's part of the whole BLS report, here:

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm

You may also be interested in what is referred to as "sticky CPI" which is reported by the Atlanta Fed: https://www.atlantafed.org/research/inflationproject/stickyp...

The name is fairly descriptive of what it is: the slowest re-acting elements of the CPI calculation. This is contrasted with the "flexible" CPI, which are the elements that react the fastest. In the last report, Sticky CPI was constant (no change), whereas all the decrease in CPI came in the flexible side of things.

5% is not that much higher than historic averages. 1990 had 5.4% inflation, and 2008 close to 4%.

Worse than 2008, got it.

I am not sure that we can predict how bad a recession will be based on inflation.

Some claim you can: "The historical evidence indicates that when inflation is as high as it is today, and the unemployment rate is as low as it is today, the probability of a recession over the next one and two years is extraordinarily high" source: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/centers/mrcb...

Probability of recession, but severity?

Well, yes, and no, the crash of 2008 caused deflationary pressure, and below [Federal Reserve] (annualized average) target inflation until 2020.

5.4% in 1990 was the highest rate in an almost 40 year stretch. In 1991 it went down to 4.2% and then wasn't above 4% until last year.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com