Balancing Inflation and Growth Part 9 of 13
Recent readings on inflation have not been encouraging. The rate of increase in the core personal consumption expenditures price index, or core PCEthat is, what people buy, except food and energywas 2.2 percent over the 12 months ending in January. Yet, its headline counterpart commodity index trading, which includes food and energy, increased an alarming 3.7 percent over the same time frame. Both core and headline PCE figures have been following an accelerating trajectory over the past several months. If you annualize the change in the PCE over the most recent three-month period, for example, youll notice that the core rose 3 percent, while headline rose 5.4 percent.
Clearly, food and energy prices matter, as these differences make clear. The price index for food rose 4.7 percent over the past 12 months, a rate not seen since 1990. Through January, the PCE energy component was up roughly 23 percent over 12 months.
While some of the movement in core consumer price inflation represents pass-through of high energy pricesto transportation services, for examplewe have also seen commodity derivative trading pickups in other components, such as recreation, education and personal care services, and upticks in components, such as apparel, that have historically exerted downward pressure on the price of the consumers basket of goods.
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