{"id":443925,"date":"2010-03-18T09:20:54","date_gmt":"2010-03-18T13:20:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/business\/archive\/2010\/03\/february-cpi-unchanged\/37665\/"},"modified":"2010-03-18T09:20:54","modified_gmt":"2010-03-18T13:20:54","slug":"february-cpi-unchanged","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/443925","title":{"rendered":"February CPI Unchanged"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Consumer Price Index was flat in February on a seasonally-adjusted basis, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.<\/a> That’s after a very slight rise of 0.2% in January<\/a>. Monthly consumer price inflation hasn’t been this low since March of last year. Today’s data reiterates the view that inflation should not be a concern in the near-term. <\/p>\n

First, here’s the historical graph via BLS: <\/p>\n

\"10-02<\/a> <\/p>\n

As you can see, inflation is quite low and has been for some time. <\/p>\n

The ever-important core CPI<\/a> — stripping out food and energy — was even lower, declining by 0.1%. A slightly deflationary core CPI makes for an even stronger argument that inflation shouldn’t be much of a worry right now in the U.S. economy. Generally, a systematic increase in core CPI is what concerns economists. That’s certainly not happening currently. Here’s a graph plotting the 12-month change of CPI and core CPI: <\/p>\n

\"10-02<\/a><\/p>\n

As you can see, core CPI (the red line) has been extremely stable and even appears to be trending down a bit. <\/p>\n

Interestingly, energy prices were also deflationary in February, decreasing by 0.5% — the first decline since April. Another standout included apparel, which saw its prices fall by 0.7%. One of the biggest increases was in medical care commodities, where prices rose by 0.8% for the month. <\/p>\n

There are some significant policy implications coming out of today’s data, especially if you pair it with yesterday’s<\/a> PPI data. First, this supports the Fed’s view<\/a> that inflation will be subdued for the time being. That should help support its desire to keep interest rates low for an “extended period.” <\/p>\n

Of course, extremely low inflation will also lead politicians to pressure the Fed not to rein in its monetary supply too soon. There’s little reason to risk weakening the recovery or causing a double-dip recession through excessive monetary tightening with inflation this low.<\/p>\n



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The Consumer Price Index was flat in February on a seasonally-adjusted basis, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s after a very slight rise of 0.2% in January. Monthly consumer price inflation hasn’t been this low since March of last year. Today’s data reiterates the view that inflation should not be a concern in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1535,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-443925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1535"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=443925"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443925\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=443925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=443925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=443925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}