What you're not hearing about why inflation is like Elon Musk in a biker bar

Wednesday, January 12, 2022
Donald L. Luskin

It's not an embedded monetary inflation if a few eccentric outliers explain the whole thing.

Update to Strategic View

Conventional CPI, a weighted average, can be unduly influenced by a few outlier items or categories. Median CPI, using the same constituents, is far lower, showing that today's inflation is not broadly based. Monetary policy errors lead to broad-based inflation by debasing the currency in which all items are priced. That is not the case today, as can be seen in the fact that, while this is the highest inflation in 39 years, it is also the greatest divergence between average and median CPI in 39 years. Unless inflation is broad based and of monetary origin, it will be transitory.