{"id":490467,"date":"2010-03-30T17:10:21","date_gmt":"2010-03-30T21:10:21","guid":{"rendered":"tag:www.economist.com,21005712"},"modified":"2010-03-30T17:10:21","modified_gmt":"2010-03-30T21:10:21","slug":"still-disinflating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/490467","title":{"rendered":"Still disinflating"},"content":{"rendered":"

THERE is no end<\/a> of debate over what should and shouldn’t be considered relevant in considering monthly price index moves. Setting that aside, many of the price indicators favoured by policymakers show a clear pattern to recent inflation moves:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

That’s from the Dallas Fed<\/a>, via Mark Thoma<\/a>. Earlier today, I listened to Paul Volcker discuss financial regulatory reform, and after his remarks he was asked about Olivier Blanchard’s floating of the idea of the utility of a move to 4% inflation targets. Mr Volcker reiterated a comment he’d previously made about the suggestion (that it’s “nonsense”), before declaring:<\/p>\n

\n

It doesn’t make me at all nervous that we have 0% price inflation at the moment.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It was a strange statement, reflecting a view that any inflation at any time is bad, as if there were never any potential downside to falling prices. It was not a rigorous answer\u2014”I can see x upsides and y downsides and on balance a higher inflation target is a bad idea”\u2014but a moralistic one. That’s an unhealthy attitude for a policymaker to have, but it seems to be surprisingly common among central bankers.<\/p>\n

Mr Volcker’s comments on financial regulation were generally sound, but there is a view among many that Barack Obama made a big mistake not granting Mr Volcker more authority, which I think is very much mistaken.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

THERE is no end of debate over what should and shouldn’t be considered relevant in considering monthly price index moves. Setting that aside, many of the price indicators favoured by policymakers show a clear pattern to recent inflation moves: That’s from the Dallas Fed, via Mark Thoma. Earlier today, I listened to Paul Volcker discuss […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4534,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-490467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490467","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\/4534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=490467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490467\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=490467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=490467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=490467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}