Two ways to interpret the latest inflation numbers

I'm still in the "not so worried" camp

Headlines couldn’t wait to jump on the latest numbers for the consumer price index yesterday - it’s easy to make the numbers look really scary:

That’s the highest year-over-year change since 2008! But, let’s not forget that it follows a big dip during the COVID crash. A lot of this is expected.

A second way to think about this number is in the monthly change:

If you consider this chart, while inflation is still high, it looks as if we may be past the peak last month and potentially decelerating. That’s speculation, of course, but the point is that it is well within the realm of possibility that inflation numbers will stabilize to a lower more consistent (and not so scary) level in the near future. Time will tell!

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