“Sometimes I Just Sits” – Thinking About CPI

An uneducated fellow was laid up in bed with a broken leg. The vicar’s wife, visiting him, asked what he did to pass the time, since he was unable to read and couldn’t leave the bed. His answer was “sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits.”[1]

The reason I haven’t written a column since the CPI report is similar. Sometimes I sits and writes, and sometimes I just sits.

That isn’t to say that I haven’t been busy; far from it. It is merely that since the CPI report there really aren’t many acts left in the drama that we call 2015. We know that inflation is at 6-year highs; we know that commodities are at 16-year lows (trivia question: exactly one commodity of the 27 in the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index is higher, on the basis of the rolling front contract, from last year. Which one?)[2]

More importantly, we know that, at least to this point, the Fed has maintained a fairly consistent vector in terms of its plan to raise interest rates this month. I maintained after the CPI report that the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, and at least a plurality of its voting members, are either nervous about a rate hike or outright negative on the desirability of one at this point. I still think that is true, but I also listen. If the Fed is not going to hike rates later this month, then it would need to telegraph that reticence well in advance of the meeting. So far, we haven’t heard much along those lines although Yellen is testifying on Thursday before the Congressional Joint Economic Committee; that is probably the last good chance to temper expectations for a rate hike although if the Employment data on Friday are especially weak then we should listen attentively for any scraps thereafter.

The case for raising rates is virtually non-existent, unless it is part of a policy of removing excess reserves from the financial system. Raising rates without removing excess reserves will only serve to accelerate inflation by causing money velocity to rise; it will also add volatility to financial markets during a period of the year that is already light on market liquidity, and with banks providing less market liquidity than ever. It will not depress growth very much, just as cutting rates didn’t help growth very much. So most of all, it is just a symbolic gesture.