What we’re reading (5/11)
“Inflation Slipped In April, But Upward Pressures Remain” (Wall Street Journal). “The Labor Department’s consumer-price index reading last month marked the first drop for inflation in eight months, down from an 8.5% annual rate in March. The decline came primarily from a slight easing in April gasoline prices, which have since reached a new high. Broadly, the report offered little evidence that inflation was cooling.”
“For Tens Of Millions Of Americans, The Good Times Are Right Now” (New York Times). “‘Maybe it’s easier to focus on the negative, but a huge number of people, maybe 40 million households, have been doing pretty well,’ said Dean Baker, an economist who was a co-founder of the liberal-leaning Center for Economic and Policy Research. ‘You’d have to go back to the late 1990s to find a similar era. Before that, the 1960s.’”
“Fed Confronts Why It May Have Acted Too Slowly On Inflation” (New York Times). “Several current and former Fed officials have suggested in recent days that, in hindsight, the central bank should have reacted more quickly and forcefully last fall, but that both profound uncertainty about the future and the Fed’s approach to setting policy slowed it down.”
“The Stock Market Is Freaking Out Because Of The End Of Free Money. It All Has To Do With Something Called ‘The Fed put’” (Fortune). “It took a while to sink in after last week, but investors had a full freak-out from Friday through Monday when they realized just how serious the Federal Reserve is about fighting inflation.”
“Fed’s Barkin Says ‘Volcker-Like Recession’ Unnecessary To Bring Inflation Down” (Market Watch). “The Federal Reserve doesn’t need to engineer a ‘Volcker-style recession’ to get inflation under control, said Richmond Fed President Tom Barkin on Tuesday. With the Fed’s benchmark policy rate at 83 basis points, ‘we are still far from the level of interest rates that constrains the economy,’ Barkin said.”
