Wolf Street: As push came to shove toward the end of the FOMC press conference on Wednesday, Fed Chair Jerome Powell, fidgeting on the hotseat of inflation and struggling with “transitory” and “temporary,” admitted that the recent rate of inflation was “not moderately above” the Fed’s inflation target but “way above target.” Today, the inflation measure that the Fed uses for this inflation target, annual “core PCE,” spiked further.
” … And he who earns wages,
Earns wages to put into a bag with holes.” Haggai 1:6
The Fed uses the “core PCE” inflation measure because it is the lowest lowball inflation measure that the US government provides. It excludes food and energy, which can be volatile, and it is structured differently than the Consumer Price Index, and it is nearly always below “core CPI.”
This Personal Consumption Expenditures price index without food and energy jumped by 0.45% in June, from May, after having jumped by 0.5% in May, 0.7% in April, and 0.4% in March, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis today. This lowest lowball inflation measure available in the US was up 3.5% from June last year, the highest year-over-year rate since May 1991:
