Inflation and Retail Sales

This morning, the government released the CPI data for December. Last month, consumer prices rose by 0.1%. Actually, working out the decimals, the CPI was up 0.1498. In the last year, inflation was up 2.12%.

The core rate rose by 0.3%. That’s the biggest monthly increase since January 2017. For the year, core prices were up 1.77%.

Here’s an updated look at the real Fed funds rate based off core inflation:

The government also said that retail sales rose by 0.4% in December. They also raised the number for November up to 0.9%. Retail sales were up 5.4% from last December.

Posted by on January 12th, 2018 at 3:31 pm


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