Commentary
It was a bad week for those promising that our inflation problems are going away. All data from January suggest exactly the opposite.
The headlines for consumer prices were all about “cooling,” “firming,” “easing,” “moderating,” and another or so dozen weasel words to disguise the reality that January’s numbers had gained steam over December and November. It didn’t look good. Headline writers were scrambling all day to figure out how to say “it’s bad” without saying “it’s bad.”
But two days later when Producer Prices came out, there was simply no denying the reality. The numbers looked terrible, so awful that even the Department of Labor had to admit that “The index for final demand goods moved up 1.2 percent in January, the largest increase since rising 2.1 percent in June 2022.”…