A customer shops at a market in the Brooklyn borough of New York on May 12. US consumer prices rose 0.8 per cent in April from a month earlier, with the annual rate jumping to 4.2 per cent, the highest since September 2008. Photo: Xinhua
Opinion
Opinion
Macroscope
How the US Fed’s reassurances on inflation fears are triggering a 1970s flashback
- Now as then, the Fed sees recent increases in the prices of food and other essential goods as transitory, believing they will stabilise with post-pandemic normalisation
- But the biggest parallel may be another policy blunder – as before, the Fed is keeping real interest rates depressed, which in the 1970s only fuelled inflation
A customer shops at a market in the Brooklyn borough of New York on May 12. US consumer prices rose 0.8 per cent in April from a month earlier, with the annual rate jumping to 4.2 per cent, the highest since September 2008. Photo: Xinhua
