Angst wrote: ↑Fri Jun 11, 2021 10:47 am
iceport wrote: ↑Thu Jun 10, 2021 10:20 pm
CuriousTacos wrote: ↑Thu Jun 10, 2021 10:08 pm
I agree that many news headlines exaggerate things. And I know you acknowledge that the recent trend of about 2.5% YoY is higher than the roughly 1.5% in recent years. But I think your plot deceptively makes it look like prices have merely returned to trendline of recent years.
Showing a few years like the following is more complete in my opinion:
What happens next is obviously unknown.
Very helpful perspective. Thanks!
Yes, 5 years adds more perspective, but I think it's still a long way from "complete". Neither is 15 years complete, but perhaps it's better than 5:
I have the impression that most economists are fairly calm about the longer term prospects for inflation. As such, I am not too concerned about this either.
Hi Angst,
Actually, I didn't re-quote all of CuriousTacos' sentences above on purpose. I think it's too easy to "read into" this particular graph too much.
I'm even more convinced after following
#Cruncher's link to the interactive version. Barring the quite viable possibility that my aptitude for interpreting graphs has taken a turn for the worse, I'd say there's not much of
anything to be gleaned from the graph.
When I play with the sliders and select one of the worst inflation periods of my lifetime, the 1970s, what do I see? Not a helluva lot!
The gently sloping line shows a slightly steeper gentle slope in the 1970s, but nothing that would reveal the real-world conditions of that time very vividly. Maybe if I've followed the evolution of this graph for a few decades I could tell how such a subtle change in slope could so drastically affect the economy. But I haven't. So the graph just doesn't provide much insight at all, if you ask me.
In reading down this thread, I just keep thinking of those telltale sort of charts nisiprius has posted in the past comparing inflation expectations to what actually occurred (or was it interest rates?
). My take-away was that it's every bit as futile to predict inflation over the next few years as it is to predict the market returns over the next few years. Yet here are all these Bogleheads trying their hand at inflation prediction, however tentative. We can't even get the
direction right, let alone the
magnitude!
That so many folks seem to be worried about inflation worries me.
Me? I don't know enough to know whether I should be worried about inflation...
"Discipline matters more than allocation.” |—| "In finance, if you’re certain of anything, you’re out of your mind." ─William Bernstein