Questioning Inflation Figures as US Consumer Price Index Drops to 4.9%
Commentary
Numbers recently released indicate that the Consumer Price Index (CPI), the most commonly used indicator of inflationary pressures, fell to a one-year annualized rate of 4.9 percent in the United States. The Biden administration heralded this as a major triumph as Twitter shills sang the praises of the Democrats’ economic stewardship. (In Canada, the government said the CPI fell to 4.4 percent.)
The U.S. figure is a significant drop from June 2022 when the CPI peaked at 9.1 percent. Critics pointed out that price increases of 4–5 percent are still unacceptably high and we are unlikely to return to the 1–2 percent range. A subgroup of inflation pessimists vocally assert that the CPI chronically underestimates general price increases and that this is a deliberate deception on the part of our political leaders….