Inflation in America soars to 8%. Or is it more like 6%?
The Fed’s preferred price gauge is more benign but also more obscure
The federal reserve’s “preferred measure of inflation” is a phrase that often crops up in reporting on the American economy. It stands in for a verbose official name: the personal-consumption-expenditures price index (pcepi). Most discussion of inflation, however, focuses on its better-known and pithier relative, the consumer-price index (cpi).
This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline “The price of accuracy”
Finance & economics July 2nd 2022
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