Cents and Sensibility: the Inflation Guy Podcast

Ep. 7: Rents and Sensibility

The biggest weight in most inflation baskets is the cost of shelter. Its weight also implies its importance, since measuring shelter wrong means you're measuring inflation wrong! In this episode of Sense and Sensibility, the Inflation Guy explains why "Primary Rents" doesn't rise as rapidly as the change in asking rents, and why "Owner's Equivalent Rent" is a concept that makes sense - and is a very necessary concept for measuring shelter inflation of owner-occupied housing.

Ep. 6: Evergrande and Inflation - Why the Model Matters

Today's global decline in stocks, if it turns into something more serious, will affect the inflation debate. In this episode of the Inflation Guy Podcast, the IG explains how asset price declines and the relationship of those declines to growth forecasts cause different effects if you are driven by a classical/Keynesian view of the world, rather than a monetarist view. While this decline may not turn out to be very large, someday the stock market will decline - and how central banks look at that event will directly affect policy. But...should it?

Ep. 5: Stagflation from a Monetarist‘s Perspective

"Stagflation" is a term we hear frequently today, as inflation indicators rise and the growth outlook has been looking less-rosy every week. How does a monetarist, as opposed to a Keynesian, think about the conditions that cause a stagflationary outcome? In this episode, the Inflation Guy walks the listener through the Equation of Exchange (MV=PQ), asking how we can get a high change in "P" associated with a low change in "Q."

Ep. 4: The Making of an Inflation Index

In this episode of Cents and Sensibility, the Inflation Guy walks through some of the issues that affect the making of an inflation index, and illustrates why decisions about what "measuring inflation" means impacts how an index is constructed, and how it compares with our visceral sense of inflation.

Ep. 3: Powell's Jackson Hole Perspectives on Inflation

In a first for the Inflation Guy, this podcast is a same-day series of thoughts about what Fed Chairman Powell said about inflation at the Jackson Hole symposium today. Spoiler: Inflation Guy was not pleased.

Ep. 2: Diamond/Water Paradox

In this episode of Cents and Sensibility, the Inflation Guy travels from Adam Smith in 1776 to the gold rush in 1849 California to today, where it seems diamonds may actually grow on trees. He makes this journey to explain how relative prices are caused largely by relative scarcities, and explain what that means in the context of inflation.

Ep 1: What I Believe

In the inaugural episode of Cents and Sensibility, the Inflation Guy introduces himself and (perhaps subconsciously channeling comedian Steve Martin's "What I Believe" bit, although if you're giggling about inflation there's a problem) explains some key beliefs he has formed, over thirty years in the financial markets, about inflation and what it means to you.