Hacker News Reader

Comment by danielmarkbruce | Hacker News Reader

It was surprisingly accurate.... mom inflation has been reasonable for several months now

By that metric, and it took quite a bit longer to get there than ideal. It's also still elevated historically and compared to FFR, all of which is a roundabout way of saying that inflation has and continues to destabilize the outlook. Stability historically comes after an n-month lag of the FFR and core inflation meeting, right? Well, banks are failing now, and 4Q24 is a ways off.

I just don't know if I'd call it a "pretty good job," is all. They were caught-off guard and didn't move quickly enough.

They are always caught off guard. Try predicting anything macro and see how well it goes to plan. Then try not moving too fast or too slow.

The idea that they aren't doing a good job because they aren't perfectly precise with their timing is misguided. It's a crazy hard job.

The difficulty is somewhat artificial. Their statements give away the game, namely their obsession with a "soft landing." Translation: an undue focus on securities markets and saving entities who'd made bad investments, i.e., picking winners. They were late because they were trying to balance a factor that isn't part of their quasi-mandate (but that is important to politicians, and to the institutions that Fed officers revolving doored from). Without that factor, you see radical hikes in 2021 and QT not being undermined by waves hands vaguely. It hurts, but less than what's coming now.

The only entities they seem to worry about is banks. And banks going under is bad news for everyone, always has been. Being a lender of last resort to banks is explicitly part of their mandate.

They worry about banks because they are a bank. If it weren't for government oversight they'd be a private bank.

>The only entities they seem to worry about is banks.

You'll have to support thay with something. Again, the language of their correspondence over the past few years says otherwise.

That's.. Delusional. It's barely budged.

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cpi.pdf

Note all the months since July 2022. It's good to read the source material rather than hyperventilating news articles.

Mean MoM % change in CPI-U from January to preceding July, 2016-2023:

* 2016: 0.01

* 2017: 0.20

* 2018: 0.27

* 2019: 0.10

* 2020: 0.21

* 2021: 0.30

* 2022: 0.61

* 2023: 0.27

Raw monthly data: https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CUSR0000SA0&output_view=pct_...

I was skeptical that month-over-month CPI had come down to reasonable levels over a wider time window, but it is much lower than the same period a year ago, and close to recent historical norms outside that inflationary spike. I am eager to see Tuesday's numbers for February inflation.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com