E-piphany

The following is a summary of my tweets following the CPI release today. You can follow me @inflation_guy. I am about to get on a plane to visit a reinsurance company to talk about inflation, so forgive me if I don’t add much color to the original tweets (as I usually do).

• CPI +0.3%, +0.1% ex-food-and-energy. About as-expected but core a little soft in that range. 1.71% is y/y core.
• Another 0.0% for Medical Care CPI. It’s hard to get core goods rising when Medical Care remains flaccid. That will change.
• Core #inflation ex-housing is down to only 1.1%! Core goods still in deflation dragging it all down…-0.1% vs +2.3% for core services.
• Owner’s Equiv Rent to 2.49% y/y. Clearly accelerating and a big risk to core going forward.
• Accel Major Grps: Housing, Apparel, Transp, Other (64.8%) decel: Food/Bev, Med Care, Recreation (28.4%). Educ/Comm unch.
• Med Care CPI only +2.01% y/y. That’s very unlikely to continue.

Big risk to core remains housing, which accelerated a heady +0.1% y/y, which is a big move for a ponderous group like Housing. Not surprising – I’ve been forecasting it for a long time, and it’s happening.