That’s right, we can’t eat iPads, and the prices of houses affect sellers too, so the relentless decline in housing is not helping people who live paycheck-to-paycheck fill up their cars with gas and buy food. – Ilene
(Reuters) – The president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank doesn’t normally face a raucous crowd.
But in Queens, New York, on Friday, William Dudley was bombarded with questions about food inflation, and his attempt to put rising commodity prices into a broader economic context only made things worse.
"When was the last time, sir, that you went grocery shopping?" one audience member asked.
Dudley tried to explain how the Fed sees things: Yes, food prices may be rising, but at the same time, other prices are declining. The Fed looks at core inflation, which strips out volatile food and energy costs, to get a better sense of where inflation may actually be heading.
A better sense or an academic, sort of distorted sense? Maybe we need to change the operative definition of inflation that the Fed uses.
Full article here: For Fed’s Dudley, iPad comment falls flat in Queens | Reuters.
Pic credit: Jr. Deputy Accountant
