Greg Mankiw says he bet Larry Ball $5 that CPI will rise by less than 2.5% for the year ending February 2025 on account of his view that shelter is finally going lower gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2024/04/its-al…

The March inflation report triggered a jailbreak by the sell-side bank and other Fed forecasters, who largely abandoned prior calls for a June cut

Most now see the first cut no sooner than Q3, and there's been a lot of movement towards expecting just one or two cuts this year.

Word 👊

wsj.com/economy/centra…

The current moment feels a bit like 2015-16 — in reverse

Back then, many expected liftoff (the first hike) followed by several more in both '15 and '16.

But the economy kept hitting air pockets of weakness, and the hikes kept getting taken out. wsj.com/livecoverage/c…

To start any kind of 'mid-cycle adjustment,' the Fed needed to see evident weakness in the economy or the kind of cooler inflation readings that were the norm in 2H 2023

Three months into 2024, we have neither. Cuts get deferred. wsj.com/economy/inflat…

Core CPI printed above forecasters' expectations for the third straight month: +0.36% in March

The 12-month core inflation rate rose from 3.75% to 3.80% in March

The 6-month annualized core CPI was 3.9%, the highest since July 2023 wsj.com/economy/inflat…

The March CPI could validate or upend the idea that the hotter-than-anticipated inflation readings in Jan and Feb reflected new-year/new-price seasonality

Wall Street forecasters expect the core CPI index rose 0.3%, lowering the 12-month rate to 3.7% from 3.8% in February

Cathy once told me that she became a copy editor at the The Wall Street Journal because back then, they weren't hiring women as reporters at the paper.

She (in jest, I am quite sure) told me how she vowed at that time to one day become the head of hiring for the newsroom and…

The index of aggregate weekly payrolls for private-sector workers—which combines hiring, wages, and hours—was up 5.9% over the last 12 months.

It looks like this over the last year:

March 2023: 6.4%
June 2023: 6.5%
Sept 2023: 5.9%
Dec 2023: 6.1%
March 2024: 5.9%