Robert Samuelson Is Worried About Inflation, Yet Again

As the saying goes, writing for Washington Post means never having to say you’re sorry. Hence the paper never apologized for saying NAFTA had caused Mexico’s GDP to quadruple when the true growth was just 84.2 percent. And Robert Samuelson needs never apologize for silly warnings about run away inflation.

The latest line is that we are supposed to be scared about the 0.5 percent inflation rate shown in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for January. He begins his piece telling readers:

“Anyone looking for good economic news will be disappointed by the latest inflation report, which showed the consumer price index (CPI) advancing by 0.5 percent in January. By itself, this isn’t especially alarming — prices jump around month to month — but it has troubling implications for the future. To some economists, it suggests the possibility of another financial crisis on the order of the 2008-2009 crash.

“Until recently, inflation seemed to be dead or, at least, in a prolonged state of remission. It was beaten down by cost-saving technologies and a caution against raising wages and prices instilled by the Great Recession. From 2010 to 2015, annual inflation as measured by the CPI averaged about 1.5 percent, often too small to be noticed. In 2016 and 2017, the annual rates inched up to 2.1 percent. On an annualized basis, January’s 0.5 percent would be 6 percent.”

Sound scary?

Actually, monthly CPI data are pretty erratic. If we are supposed to be scared by January’s 0.5 percent figure, we should also have been bothered by the 0.5 percent figure for last September as well the 0.5 percent rate for January of 2017. We also hit 0.5 percent in February of 2013 and again in September of 2012, which followed a 0.6 percent rise in August. In short, the 0.5 percent CPI inflation rate for January really doesn’t provide us much basis for concern about rising inflation.

Even this rise was driven by a 3.0 percent jump in energy prices. Since energy prices are highly erratic, economists usually pull energy prices, along with food prices, out of the index and focus on the “core” rate of inflation. This was 0.3 percent in January. The core rate over the last year has been 1.8 percent. Samuelson would have had a better story if he wrote this piece last year. The year over year core inflation rate as of January 2017 was 2.3 percent.