Inertia Wins!

The new inflation numbers are out, and they aren’t pretty. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) went up 0.3 percent during April, and is up a total of 8.3 percent over the last year. This is a slight improvement over last month’s 8.5 percent. More troubling is the core CPI reading, which increased 6.2 percent over the last year. What is this core inflation number, and why is it useful to know?

Core CPI is calculated the same way as standard CPI—take a hypothetical basket of goods and track their prices over time. The difference is that Core CPI removes the food and energy parts of the basket. The reason for this is that, contrary to popular belief, CPI doesn’t directly measure inflation.

Inflation is monetary; it has to do with the money supply growing at a different rate from real goods and services. The trouble is that non-inflation price changes are happening at the same time. These can be due to supply and demand shocks, changing tastes, seasonal patterns, and other factors. The CPI can’t tell how much of a price change is due to monetary inflation and how much is due to non-inflation factors like supply and demand. It just tracks price changes in a hypothetical basket of goods without asking what caused them.

Food and energy prices are notoriously volatile, which means that a lot of those changes have nothing to do with inflation. Grocery stores and gas stations change their prices every day. They can take enormous swings for reasons that have nothing to do with the money supply, such as Putin’s invasion of Ukraine or new regulations.

Taking food and energy out of the equation, as Core CPI and similar core inflation measures do, helps to keep the focus on inflation-related price increases. It isn’t perfect, because other goods are constantly subject to non-monetary price changes, too. But for those interested in tacking monetary inflation, core inflation is an improvement on the standard CPI.

It’s possible that inflation is at or near its peak right now. There is a lag time of up to a year and a half between the Fed’s monetary moves and their taking effect throughout the economy. The Fed increased the money supply by nearly $5 trillion during the pandemic, which caused most of the inflation we’re seeing now. The Fed stopped its big bond buy in March, and in June will begin slightly selling bonds. It will take some time before that shows up in any data.

Time will tell, but given that lag, it is possible we’re at or past the very worst of the current inflation, though it likely won’t significantly ease up until well into next year. Core CPI and other core-style indicators will help to give a more accurate picture of that process as it happens than will the standard CPI headline number.

President Biden gave remarks on Tuesday declaring inflation his top domestic priority. Like many people, he seems not to understand that inflation is a monetary issue. Biden’s proposals each have their pros and cons, such price controls on insulin, antitrust action against the meat industry, and higher spending on renewable energy. But none of them have anything to do with inflation because they don’t have anything to do with the money supply.

Inflation is happening because the money supply is growing faster than real economic output. The Federal Reserve engaged in rapid money creation during the pandemic, and the result is today’s inflation. It will go back down once the Fed draws back some of that increase and money supply growth starts to better match the real economy’s growth. That’s on the Federal Reserve, not on Congress or the White House.

The political branches’ bipartisan deficit spending binge is likely responsible for a percentage point or so in the inflation rate, but one percentage point out of eight does little to explain today’s mess.

Biden does deserve some credit for the brief time he did discuss monetary policy. The Federal Reserve, not the political branches, runs monetary policy in the U.S. President Biden’s promise to “never interfere with the Fed’s judgment or tell them what to do” is a welcome change from his predecessor’s frequent public threats to Fed officials—assuming he keeps this promise. Some of his ideologically charged Fed nominees call into question his commitment to the Fed’s independence.

President Biden instead argued that inflation has two non-monetary causes: the pandemic and Putin’s war on Ukraine. Neither of these has much to do with inflation, because neither of them affects the money supply.

Biden then contrasted his own inflation plan with Sen. Rick Scott’s (R-FL) Republican economic plan. Sen. Scott’s plan also has little to do with inflation. A text search for “Federal Reserve” throughout the Scott plan’s economic planks on its website turned up zero hits. Scott’s plan has little support even in his own party. It has zero chance of becoming law, even if Republicans retake Congress. But as Grover Norquist pointed out, Scott’s plan is a political gift to Democrats, so one understands why Biden kept invoking it. It’s smart politics.

You can see why many economists find today’s inflation speech a little frustrating. It wasn’t actually about the thing it was about.

Still, President Biden did say plenty about faster-than-inflation price increases in gas, food, and other goods that almost everyone uses. Again, the faster-than-inflation components of those price increases are not inflation. That doesn’t mean that those prices increases aren’t real or that they aren’t hurting family budgets. They deserve policy action. But they are separate from inflation, and should be treated separately. As I’ve written before and will write again, supply and demand changes are not inflation. If isn’t monetary, it isn’t inflation.

One of President Biden’s energy proposals is to make more ethanol to reduce the need for imported oil. However, he did not mention the tradeoff: higher food prices. Farmers have planted only a certain amount of corn this season (planting season is typically late April to early May). Diverting more corn to ethanol leaves less left over for food and livestock feed. The increased ethanol might shave a penny or two from the price of a gallon of gas, based on the amounts involved. The tradeoff is higher prices for meat and for any food made from corn, such as chips, tortillas, and many cereals and sweets.

To fight rising food prices (counteracting his ethanol proposal), Biden proposed an antitrust investigation against meat producers. Realistically, this is Biden looking tough while doing nothing. Considering the likely policy alternatives, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Antitrust cases take years, and inflation will likely be long gone before any case is resolved.

Biden’s response to food prices should instead involve trade liberalization. When asked about ending the China tariffs after his remarks, Biden said, “we’re discussing it, and no decision has been made on it.” On the merits, that decision should have been made long ago. Tariff relief would lower, by an average of almost 20 percent, the prices of thousands of goods worth hundreds of billions of dollars, from clothing to medicine to electronics. Combine this with the Fed finally getting its monetary house in order, and Biden would have a substantial accomplishment to brag about—and even better, for political purposes, it would involve undoing one of his predecessor’s signature policies.

While Biden did point out the importance of ports and trucks in opening up supply networks, he offered no concrete proposals for liberalizing them. Dockworkers’ unions have long resisted automation, around-the-clock operations, and other improvements that ports in most other countries adopted years ago. Convincing unions to join the current century would be a good start, though this likely requires more political will than anyone in the White House or Congress currently has.

Biden would like to see more truckers on the road. That is an easier lift, since many of the obstacles are in Washington, and under Biden’s control. Good ideas there include lowering the federal age requirement for truckers down to 18, giving truckers more control over their own hours, and getting rid of the 220 percent tariff on truck chassis, which forces small owner-operators to pay more than triple the world price for one of their truck’s most important components. Biden did not mention these ideas, but they would help ease prices on many goods (though again, separately from inflation, because these don’t affect the money supply).

President Biden gave his speech in the first place because the public wants to see him doing something about the country’s problems. This is problematic even in good times. The president has little control over inflation, and most of his proposals harm more than they help, while leaving inflation unaddressed.

Even a serious liberalization agenda on trade, labor, and regulation would have only a small effect on taming inflation, because those policies wouldn’t affect the money supply. They would have substantial economic benefits and are worth pursuing, but it would be misleading to say they affect inflation.

President Biden is hardly alone in not knowing what causes inflation. But when your starting point is in error, there is a very good chance your policy conclusions will also be in error. There is plenty he can do to fight inflation-unrelated price increases, but aside from a glimmer of hope for tariff relief, few of those options appear to be on the table.

The Fed this week announced a half percentage point hike in its federal funds rate. This is the right thing to do, but it will have only a small effect on inflation. Far more important is an announcement the Fed made the same day, but got far less coverage. It will finally begin winding down its balance sheet of government bonds in June. Buying and selling bonds is the Fed’s single most powerful inflation-adjustment tool, far more powerful than interest rate adjustments. It should have started selling off bonds months ago, but June is better than never.

Inflation (or deflation) happens when there is a mismatch between the money supply and real economic output. If one grows or shrinks, the other needs to grow or shrink by a matching amount, or there will be inflation or deflation. The Fed’s job is basically to play a matching game.

Buying bonds is how the Fed directly increases the money supply—which directly increases the inflation rate. When the Fed buys bonds, it pays for them with money that it newly creates. This new money then winds its way through the economy.

If the Fed wants to directly shrink the money supply—and directly reduce the inflation rate—it can sell bonds. The money it makes from the sales can then be retired from circulation. Interest rate adjustments, by comparison, have only indirect effects on the amount of money in circulation.

In ordinary times, the Fed should engage in some bond buying. If real economic output goes up by 3 percent, the money supply should go up by a matching amount to prevent deflation. Since the Fed has a 2 percent target inflation rate, the Fed would instead usually react to 3 percent growth, with a 5 percent money increase—3 percentage points to match real growth plus two extra percentage points to meet the Fed’s inflation target. (The Fed’s exact response should vary depending on other factors, but this simplified illustration tells the essential story.)

That is not what happened during the pandemic. The Fed’s bond holdings grew by 72 percent in three months, then grew some more. It was the largest bond-buying spree in the Fed’s history. The Fed’s bond holdings totaled about $4.1 trillion when COVID-19 hit in February 2020. Three months later, it was $7.1 trillion. It continued buying bonds until March 2022, and its portfolio now stands at $8.9 trillion.

The Fed’s announced selloff is modest in this context, and may not be enough to substantially reduce inflation when the lag time ends sometime next year. It will reduce its $8.9 trillion portfolio by $47.5 billion per month for three months, then $95 billion per month for an unspecified amount of time.

Winding down inflation comes with a risk of recession, which explains the Fed’s timidity, especially in light of last quarter’s GDP contraction. So, the Fed has its reasons, though they are not entirely convincing, considering the short-term and long-term pain that inflation causes.

Nor did the Fed’s initial buying spree come out of nowhere. When people stop spending money, the Fed’s typical response is to inject some new money into the economy as a form of stimulus. It can work in the short run, though usually with the tradeoff of some slowdown later on.

The trouble is that the Fed misread the situation during the pandemic. It wasn’t a typical recession. There was no financial crisis, housing bubble, or economic malady. A healthy economy shut down for a bit, then opened back up. The virus had to pass so people could safely open back up, and that’s it. The Fed used the traditional tools to fight a new battle, and that is the biggest driver of today’s inflation. Overspending by the political branches didn’t help, but that explains only about 1 percentage point of 8.5 percent inflation.

There is a lag time in bond-buying actions from about six 6 to 18 months, since it takes time for new money to move from bond sellers’ wallets out to the larger economy. The rise in inflation that began in 2021 was the result of the Fed’s 2020 bond-buying spree. Since the Fed isn’t trimming its bond portfolio until June 2022, even if inflation has already peaked, it will likely remain high at least until early 2023 and possibly longer, since the Fed’s more recent buyups haven’t yet worked through the economy, and the selloffs to counter them are both late and relatively small. Relief would come sooner had the Fed acted sooner and more boldly.

Despite last quarter’s GDP decline, economic output is already back to where it would have been if COVID had never happened. Because of today’s needless inflation, the Fed’s delayed response in fixing it, plus overspending and general policy bungling by Congress and two presidents, a recession that COVID couldn’t cause might happen anyway. While this week’s interest rate hike will get all the attention, the real news is the Fed’s coming bond selloff.

A subsequent post will explain why the federal funds rate has only a small effect on inflation, and why journalists and stock markets should pay less attention to it.