Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Headline CPI Actual

August 2007: 207.917
July 2007: 208.299

That's -0.18% for the month, not seasonally adjusted. On a seasonally adjusted basis it was -0.14%. No real surprises there.

CONSUMER PRICE INDEX: AUGUST 2007

The highlights:

Food prices were up.
Apparel took back July's gains.
Housing was flat (very weak).
Transportation and energy were decidedly negative.

That takes some pressure off of Bernanke in the short-term.

On the one hand, as I stated in my last post, oil and commodities were weak in August and have since bounced back. To make matters worse, last year saw a very deflationary commodity selloff. Should we not get another one this fall the year over year headline CPI number might not look so tame in a few more months. The seasonally adjusted CPI is up 2.9% in the last nine months and there are still three months to go.

On the other hand, the CPI (seasonally adjusted) has been extremely flat (0.7% annual rate) for the last three months. If that is the new trend then we're bordering on deflation.

There's quite a bit to think about clearly.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

General Mills profit up on price hikes

http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUSWNAS435820070919

Hum

Kevin

Stagflationary Mark said...

It is almost like oil is used to make food (fertilize it, harvest it, transport it). Go figure!

No fears though! We more than make up for it in the long-term by "productively" blogging and surfing the Internet. ;)