Cents and Sensibility: the Inflation Guy Podcast

It seems every day these days we hear about another tariff being applied to a trading partner of the U.S. (or, more usually, being threatened). The usual media reaction to these threats are something along the lines of saying "Oh my sainted aunt. This sort of talk gives me the vapors" because it is so, so, so bad. Tariffs are archaic shibboleths that no truly modern economist would ever support. C...

Today the Inflation Guy answers a reader question. What are the long-term effects of having 4% inflation compared with 2% inflation? Does that small increase in the inflation rate have any important ramifications? Hooo yeah you betcha it does. The Inflation Guy goes through a number of them, and feels like he probably left some out in the process. Along the way, he also had some choice remarks abo...

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 dat...

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 - b...

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 tr...

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 an...

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 dec...

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...

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...

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. Plea...

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...

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 wro...

The August vacation time is over, and we now hurtle into the unknown last third of the year. The Inflation Guy starts this journey by clearing his desk of the small inflation stories that are interesting and worth discussing, but don't by themselves warrant a full episode. He discusses power, supply chains, price-linked currencies, Japan's experience with trying to get more inflation, and sticky r...

It's time for another CPI Report analysis, and the Inflation Guy wades through the confusing report to conclude that...it's not quite as good as it looks. In Episode 106, he talked about a "Potential Pony Situation." Is this a reverse pony situation? What the heck does that even mean? Who writes this stuff?   NOTES Podcast Callback: “Ep. 106: This Month's CPI Report - A Potential Pony Situation” (...

In this episode of Cents and Sensibility, the Inflation Guy begins by addressing the recent stock market sell-off and tells you what is really causing it. Hint: he told you in Episode 116 it was going to happen. And: if we are actually headed into a recession and possibly a bear market, what does that mean for inflation? Keep your eyes on the macro, not the micro. The Inflation Guy tells you what...

Perhaps a little less coffee would be in order. The Inflation Guy in this episode wanders through several topics, including the Biden Administration's proposal for national rent control, the eviction moratorium, different measures of rent inflation, market volatility and where to hide for the next 110 days until the US election. Focus, man, focus. Still, he has useful contributions on these topics...

It's that time again, and even though the punditry is now fixated more on the Unemployment Report than the inflation reports, the Inflation Guy doesn't have the trademark or the expertise to be The Unemployment Guy so this podcast is sticking to its knitting. This month's CPI report was the best we have seen in some time, and largely for the right reasons. Are there still things that need to happe...

One of the absolute rock-solid articles of faith in the economics community is the proposition that increasing interest rates causes inflation to decline. If you want to slow inflation by a lot, you need to increase interest rates a lot. There is no question that increasing interest rates slows economic growth, and hurts people by doing so. The only reason to do it is because economists believe st...

On this episode of Cents and Sensibility, the Inflation Guy is blessed with not one but two outstanding guests, who help him unravel the significance of a recent client's problem: after selling his bitcoin on an exchange, the exchange made it difficult (so far, impossible) to transfer the proceeds back to his bank. As the Inflation Guy notes, "that's not in the marketing literature about crypto."...

This month's CPI was a good number - happy news! But if the Inflation Guy was going to design a 'good number' from scratch, he wouldn't make it look like this. He would start at the other end. What does that mean? Take a listen, and find out why this is a good report and a 'goods' report, but maybe not a great report.   NOTES Blog for this month’s CPI: Inflation Guy’s CPI Summary (May 2024) Import...

At the 2023 Fed conference at Jackson Hole, Chairman Powell promised that the Fed would keep fighting inflation "until the job is done." Is the job done? The Inflation Guy thinks the signs suggest inflation is converging on a higher level than the Fed desires. Will the Fed really keep after it? Listen and find out what the Inflation Guy thinks. NOTES Pod Callback: Ep. 109: Famous Last Words Powell...

The economists were mostly on-target with today's CPI report, at least with the headline and core figures. But that doesn't mean that there was nothing going on underneath the surface. Below the big headlines, some things are getting better and some things...aren't. What does it all mean, and does the Fed have some cover to cut rates? Listen to this episode to hear the Inflation Guy's take on thos...

"They couldn't hit an elephant at this distance!" - General John Sedgewick, Union, US Civil War, moments before he was struck by a bullet in the eye. The tradition of 'famous last words' is alive and well, especially at the Federal Reserve and Treasury. From Bernanke saying the subprime crisis would be contained, to Yellen and Powell describing inflation as 'transitory,' and far beyond - the track...

There are several pernicious myths about the velocity of money that seem to never die. "Friedman said velocity is stable." "Velocity is just a plug number, so it is random." "Velocity is permanently impaired and only declines over time." These drive the Inflation Guy bananas, and from time to time he feels the need to talk about velocity. In this episode, the IG describes the main inputs into his...

We don't know if the origin of the 'ten most dangerous words in the English language' was Ronald Reagan, or if the story predates him. But those words, "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help you," are the theme to today's podcast. The Inflation Guy interprets some recent news stories, but ties it all together with a crucial observation about what happens if the 'scarce resource' in a parti...