Will it hold back economic growth?
Executive Summary
Inflation has remained stubbornly – and perplexingly – low even as the United States has experienced sustained growth after the 2007–09 recession. Federal Reserve policymakers and economists alike are puzzled by the sluggish price growth, which is a departure from the historic tendency for inflation to rise as unemployment falls. Persistently low inflation during an economic expansion poses a challenge for the Fed, which is moving to raise its benchmark interest rate after reducing it to near zero during the recession. While some policymakers, including Fed Chair Janet Yellen, say that higher inflation could be just around the corner, a number of economic experts argue that the central bank should ease off on interest rate increases until there are stronger signals that inflation really is on the rebound. Other economists say that concern over weak inflation is misplaced because slow price growth is beneficial.
Some key takeaways include:
Too little inflation can be just as big a problem as too much inflation, because sluggish price growth can hamper economic expansion by suppressing consumer spending.
Core inflation, which excludes prices for volatile categories such as food and energy, has largely hovered below the Fed’s 2 percent target rate since the recession.
Yellen and her likely successor at the helm of the Fed, Jerome Powell, have both called recent inflation trends a “mystery.”
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Resources for Further Study
Bibliography
Books
Bernanke, Ben S., “The Courage to Act: A Memoir of a Crisis and Its Aftermath,” W.W. Norton & Company, 2015. The former chair of the Federal Reserve provides an insider’s account of the 2007–09 financial crisis and the central bank’s post-crisis effort to stabilize the economy, including the move to establish an inflation target.
Reinhart, Carmen M., and Kenneth S. Rogoff, “This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly,” Princeton University Press, 2009. Two Harvard teachers, a professor of international finance at the John F. Kennedy School of Government (Reinhart) and an economics and public policy professor (Rogoff), examine the history of financial crises and the roles that inflation and other factors have played.
Articles
Appelbaum, Binyamin, “U.S. Inflation Remains Low, and That’s a Problem,” The New York Times, July 24, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/
Harford, Tim, “A billion prices can’t be wrong,” Financial Times, May 13, 2016, https://tinyurl.com/
Lowery, Annie, “The Controversy Over Inflation,” The Atlantic, June 15, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/
McGinty, Jo Craven, “CPI vs. PCE: Untangling the Alphabet Soup of Inflation Gauges,” The Wall Street Journal, March 20, 2015, https://tinyurl.com/
Timiraos, Nick, and David Harrison, “Mr. Ordinary: Who Is Jerome Powell, Trump’s Federal Reserve Pick?” The Wall Street Journal, Nov. 2, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/
Reports and Studies
Bivens, Josh, “Is 2 percent too low? Rethinking the Fed’s arbitrary inflation target to avoid another Great Recession,” Economic Policy Institute, June 9, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/
Reed, Stephen B., “One hundred years of price change: the Consumer Price Index and the American inflation experience,” Monthly Labor Review, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, April 2014, https://tinyurl.com/
The Next Step
Changing Workforce
“Beijing’s Migrant Clear-Out May Hit Growth and Fuel Inflation,” Bloomberg, Dec. 3, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/
“Japan’s biggest lender MUFG plans to slash workforce by some 15%,” The Business Times, Nov. 21, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/
Karabell, Zachary, “How Uber’s ‘Invisible’ Workforce Could Affect Your Taxes,” Wired, Nov. 7, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/
Globalization
“New York Fed President William Dudley isn’t Worried That U.S. inflation is ‘a Little’ Low,” Reuters/Fortune, Nov. 28, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/
Bernstein, Jared, “Two inflation puzzles, one inflation monster,” The Washington Post, Sept. 11, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/
Hannon, Paul, “BIS Says Globalization Is Answer to Inflation Puzzle,” The Wall Street Journal, Sept. 22, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/
Organizations
American Bankers Association
1120 Connecticut Ave., N.W., Washington, DC 20036
1-800-226-5377
https://www.aba.com
A trade association for the banking industry.
Center for Popular Democracy
449 Troutman St., Suite A, Brooklyn, NY 11237
1-347-985-2220
https://populardemocracy.org
cpd@populardemocracy.org
The progressive group whose “Fed Up” campaign advocates for the central bank to hold interest rates low to spur full employment and wage growth.
European Central Bank
60640 Frankfurt am Main, Germany
+49 69 1344 1300
https://www.ecb.europa.eu/
info@ecb.europa.eu
The central bank for the 19 countries in the European Union that have adopted the euro as their currency.
Federal Reserve
Constitution Avenue and 20th Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20551
1-202-452-3000
https://www.federalreserve.gov
The central bank of the United States.
National Association of Manufacturers
733 10th St., N.W., Suite 700, Washington, DC 20001
1-202-637-3000
https://www.nam.org
manufacturing@nam.org
An association representing manufacturing firms of all sizes and sectors throughout the country.
U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis
4600 Silver Hill Rd., Suitland, MD 20746
1-301-278-9004
https://www.bea.gov
A Commerce Department agency that produces economic statistics, including the personal consumption expenditures price index often used by the Fed to measure inflation.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
Postal Square Building, 2 Massachusetts Ave, N.E., Washington, DC 20212-0001
1-202-691-5200
https://www.bls.gov
A Labor Department agency that tracks the consumer price index, a commonly cited measure of inflation.
DOI: 10.1177/237455680336.n1