Cents and Sensibility: the Inflation Guy Podcast

Ep. 129: This Month's CPI Report – This One Isn’t the Story

Let's face it: there is nothing more exciting than the monthly consumer inflation report. Don't we all agree on that? Is there any day that we collectively brace the day with such enthusiasm as the day the CPI report comes out? Surely not.

However, this month...the December CPI...just isn't the story. The Inflation Guy today dutifully addresses the data, but more importantly focuses on how the data is surely going to be different going forward due to many, many causes for inflection that are operating right now. This will change data, markets, and narratives. The IG guides you through it all!

 

NOTES

Very important blog post: “What Makes a Stable Coin Stable?” https://inflationguy.blog/2024/10/31/what-makes-a-stable-coin-stable/

Blog for this month’s CPI: “Inflation Guy’s CPI Summary (December 2024)” (https://inflationguy.blog/2025/01/15/inflation-guys-cpi-summary-december-2024/ )

Ep. 127: The Point of Inflation Inflection (https://inflationguy.podbean.com/e/ep-127-the-point-of-inflation-inflection/ )

Website for California Wildfire official tracking (https://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents )

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Ep. 128: Will Wildfires Change the Inflation Trajectory?

It's 2025, and the Inflation Guy - like inflation itself, actually - is not yet dead. After a one-month hiatus, he kicks off the new year with a quick review of the current state of affairs and then addresses the question of whether the catastrophic California wildfires will help push inflation higher. It isn't as if that is the most-important thing to think about, when it comes to those fires - but it is worth thinking about all of the implications of large-scale disasters.

ERRATUM- IG refers to Bullard. Brain freeze. He meant Waller, a current member of the Board of Governors at the Fed.

 

NOTES

Very important blog post: “What Makes a Stable Coin Stable?” https://inflationguy.blog/2024/10/31/what-makes-a-stable-coin-stable/

Blog for this month’s CPI: “Inflation Guy’s CPI Summary (November 2024)” (https://inflationguy.blog/2024/12/11/inflation-guys-cpi-summary-november-2024/ )

Last 2024 Podcast “Ep. 127: The Point of Inflation Inflection” (https://inflationguy.podbean.com/e/ep-127-the-point-of-inflation-inflection/ )

Old Blog: “Some Effects on Inflation from Harvey and Irma” (from 2017) (https://inflationguy.blog/2017/09/11/some-effects-on-inflation-from-harvey-and-irma/ )

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Ep. 127: The Point of Inflation Inflection

For more than a year now, the story about inflation and why inflation was almost certainly going to stay high (in the 'high 3s, low 4s' on median inflation, as the Inflation Guy has long held) was a story about the guaranteed rebound in money velocity. That has been an easy story and forecasting medium-term inflation has been consequently pretty easy.

That is changing.

Velocity has made a round trip to where it was prior to COVID. And that means that the underlying drivers of inflation going forward are changing. In this episode, the Inflation Guy explains what that means for the future of inflation.

 

NOTES

Very important blog post: “What Makes a Stable Coin Stable?” https://inflationguy.blog/2024/10/31/what-makes-a-stable-coin-stable/

Blog for this month’s CPI: “Inflation Guy’s CPI Summary (October 2024)” (https://inflationguy.blog/2024/11/13/inflation-guys-cpi-summary-october-2024/ )

To Subscribe to Quarterly Inflation Outlook: https://inflationguy.blog/shop/   Now just $29.99/quarter!

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Ep. 126: Firing Federal Workers is a Positive Supply Shock

This is one of the rare podcast episodes that you might consider listening to at 75% speed instead of 125%. Because the Inflation Guy is feeling feisty, and when he feels feisty he talks fast. And he's feisty because today (why today, of all days? No one knows) he is especially triggered by the bad economics going around that suggests that mass layoffs of Federal employees would be recessionary and very painful. Au contraire, says the Inflation Guy (or he would say that, were he French) - firing Federal workers is a positive supply shock.

Listen, and find out in what way laying off Federal workers is like mass deportations of illegal immigrants.

NOTES

Goodhart, Charles and Manoj Pradhan, The Great Demographic Reversal: Ageing Societies, Waning Inequality, and an Inflation Revival (Product link: https://amzn.to/493QbJK )

Very important blog post: “What Makes a Stable Coin Stable?” https://inflationguy.blog/2024/10/31/what-makes-a-stable-coin-stable/

Blog for this month’s CPI: “Inflation Guy’s CPI Summary (October 2024)” (https://inflationguy.blog/2024/11/13/inflation-guys-cpi-summary-october-2024/ )

To Subscribe to Quarterly Inflation Outlook: https://inflationguy.blog/shop/   Now just $29.99/quarter!

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Ep. 125: This Month's CPI Report - Premature Accommodation

Well, it was always a risk for the Fed to start their rate-cutting path with a highly-unusual 50bps cut, while inflation was still high. But after today's CPI report, that unusual (some would say suspiciously political-looking) move puts the Fed in a difficult bind. In this episode, the Inflation Guy talks about the CPI report and explains how the Fed-Congress quid-pro-quo that has existed for decades now puts the FOMC in a sticky situation.

NOTES

Very important blog post: “What Makes a Stable Coin Stable?” https://inflationguy.blog/2024/10/31/what-makes-a-stable-coin-stable/

To Subscribe to Quarterly Inflation Outlook: https://inflationguy.blog/shop/    (we may close up subscriptions to this soon)

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Ep.124: Market Thoughts After a Trump Victory

Contrary to a lot of expectations, we already seem to know the basic shape of American government going forward, with Donald Trump as President with a Republican Senate and (likely) a marginally Republican House. In this podcast episode, the Inflation Guy addresses the initial market moves, which he characterizes as the "Trump caricature" response, and explains which of these moves make sense, and which are likely senseless knee-jerk reactions to cartoonish representations of Trump's likely priorities come January 20th.

NOTES

Ashton, Michael, The Efficient Tariff: Systematically Balancing Security and Welfare Concerns (March 1, 1992). The American Economist, Vol 36, No 1, 1992, pp 44-52. , Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2915287

Blog post on sizing positions when volatility changes: “Kicking Tails” (Feb 2018) https://inflationguy.blog/2018/02/12/kicking-tails/

Blog for this month’s CPI: “Inflation Guy’s CPI Summary (September 2024)” (https://inflationguy.blog/2024/10/10/inflation-guys-cpi-summary-september-2024/ )

Very important blog post: “What Makes a Stable Coin Stable?” https://inflationguy.blog/2024/10/31/what-makes-a-stable-coin-stable/

To Subscribe to Quarterly Inflation Outlook: https://inflationguy.blog/shop/    (we may close up subscriptions to this soon)

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Check out the website! https://www.EnduringInvestments.com/

Ep. 123: This Month's CPI Report - Inflation Peek-a-Boo

One of the perils of being an analyst (although the Inflation Guy happens to be an investor and trader, and only coincidentally an analyst) is that behavioral biases tend to make us exaggerate the importance of any small collection of data. This appears to be what happened in the summer, when a couple of low CPI prints persuaded the Federal Reserve that the inflation battle was essentially won and it could turn its attention to the developing weakness in the economy.

Peek-a-boo! Over the last couple of months, inflation has come back to just about exactly where it was before the dip during the summer, raising at least the tickle of a question about whether the Fed's 50bps interest rate cut recently could constitute a policy error. In this episode, the Inflation Guy breaks down the data and opines on this topic.

 

NOTES

Blog for this month’s CPI: “Inflation Guy’s CPI Summary (September 2024)” (https://inflationguy.blog/2024/10/10/inflation-guys-cpi-summary-september-2024/)

To Subscribe to Quarterly Inflation Outlook: https://inflationguy.blog/shop/    (we may close up subscriptions to this soon)

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Ep. 122: The Role of Linkers in Portfolio Construction, with Chris Clothier

The Inflation Guy Podcast welcomes a special guest this week: Chris Clothier, co-CIO of UK asset manager CG Asset Management. Together, Chris and the Inflation Guy discuss how they think about inflation-linked bonds in the context of a portfolio: how to think about their return; different aspects of their risk; and what role/benefit they play in the construction of an 'all-weather' portfolio.

Please welcome Chris Clothier to the podcast!

 

NOTES

David Hackett Fischer, The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History. (https://www.amazon.com/Great-Wave-Revolutions-Rhythm-History/dp/019512121X )

Blog for this month’s CPI: “Inflation Guy’s CPI Summary (August 2024)” (https://inflationguy.blog/2024/09/11/inflation-guys-cpi-summary-august-2024/ )

To Subscribe to Quarterly Inflation Outlook: https://inflationguy.blog/shop/    (we may close up subscriptions to this soon)

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Check out the website! https://www.EnduringInvestments.com/

Ep. 121: Real-Feel Inflation: Why Inflation FEELS Higher Than It Is

A rogue's gallery of inflation hucksters have made lots of money over the years by preying on the sense that the average consumer/investor has that "my inflation is higher than the CPI," with some spin usually on how the gov'mint is intentionally understating inflation for some nefarious reason. These hucksters take advantage of the fact that, for reasons that are so native to the economic system that Daniel Kahneman won a Nobel Prize for describing them, consumers perceptions are not just biased, but biased in systematic ways - which, in the case of inflation, always tends to increase the perceived level of inflation.

In this episode of Cents and Sensibility, the Inflation Guy explains how these biases operate on our sense of inflation. If you too want to sound erudite at your next cocktail party - "Actually, Muffy, inflation just seems like it's 10% because..." - then this is a must-listen episode. If not, then you're also probably invited to more cocktail parties than the Inflation Guy is.

 

NOTES

Ashton, Michael, “Real-Feel” Inflation: Quantitative Estimation of Inflation Perceptions, Business Economics, Volume 47, pages 14–26, (2012)  (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/be.2011.35 )

Blog callback: Eighth Grade Math vs Shadowstats (https://inflationguy.blog/2021/05/25/eighth-grade-math-vs-shadowstats/ )

Podcast callback: Ep. 72: Chapwood Index vs CPI – Which is the Better Inflation Index?     (https://inflationguy.podbean.com/e/ep-72-chapwood-index-vs-cpi-%e2%80%93-which-is-the-better-inflation-index/ )

Blog for this month’s CPI: “Inflation Guy’s CPI Summary (August 2024)” (https://inflationguy.blog/2024/09/11/inflation-guys-cpi-summary-august-2024/ )

To Subscribe to Quarterly Inflation Outlook: https://inflationguy.blog/shop/    (we may close up subscriptions to this soon)

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Check out the website! https://www.EnduringInvestments.com/

Ep. 120: This Month's CPI Report - Down to the Big Sticky

It's that time again, time for the CPI report, and the Inflation Guy tackles it with his usual enthusiasm. Now, some people think when they hear from a guy called "The Inflation Guy" that everything is going to be about how inflation is higher than you think, and you should buy gold gold gold gold or bitcoin bitcoin bitcoin. But you don't get to be The Inflation Guy(tm) by systematically being wrong half the time. In this episode, the IG explains how this report isn't as bad as it looks, and most importantly should not change the Fed's decision about whether to cut rates by 25bps or 50bps next week. Listen to find out why!

 

NOTES

Blog for this month’s CPI: “Inflation Guy’s CPI Summary (August 2024)” (https://inflationguy.blog/2024/09/11/inflation-guys-cpi-summary-august-2024/ )

To Subscribe to Quarterly Inflation Outlook: https://inflationguy.blog/shop/    (we may close up subscriptions to this soon)

To Subscribe for free to the blog: https://inflationguy.blog/

Check out the website! https://www.EnduringInvestments.com/