Commentary Recently, President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping held a virtual summit where they discussed the possibility of a joint release of crude oil from their respective country’s Strategic Petroleum Reserves in hopes of easing inflation. With inflationary effects already likely to ease, the simultaneous tapping of reserves could cause financial conditions to tighten and equity prices to correct. Inflation, as expressed by the consumer price index (CPI) on a year-over-year rate of change, has a high correlation with crude oil prices. Crude oil is used in more than 6,000 products and the production of those products, which makes consumer prices highly sensitive to any changes in the price of crude oil. Consumer prices are so sensitive to the price of crude oil that the CPI tends to lag changes in the year-over-year rate of change in crude oil price. When crude oil prices start to fall, consumer …