by Mike ‘Mish’ Shedlock
Mish Talk
When people start cheering rising medical and rent prices as welcome “progress”, you know they belong back in the 5th grade along with economist Paul Krugman.
Today, some unknown Econoday writer cited such “progress” in regards to today’s reported CPI numbers even though month-to-month the CPI came in at zero.
Highlights
The headlines for the consumer price report look very soft but there are important offsetting pressures. The CPI came in unchanged in July, pulled back by a 1.6 percent monthly decline in energy prices and other weakness including flat prices for food and contraction in transportation. And it doesn’t look much better when excluding food & energy where the gain for the core is only 0.1 percent.