Another data point suggesting trend PCE is running 2 1/2-3% right now.

Important new paper by Alessandro Caiumi & Giovanni Peri

During 2000-2019, #immigrants in the US had a positive & significant effect (+1.7 to +2.6) on the #wages of less educated native workers & a positive effect on #employment

Would rather live in Detroit today than Rome 2000 years ago and it’s not a particularly close call.

One counter-nostalgia/confirmation bias position I hold is that kid's TV shows are much better now than when I was a kid.

'No no, *LIFE* to America!'

Hedonic deflation!

How to say 'hello' in different languages:

Spanish: Hola
Indonesian: Selamat siang
Japanese: こんにちは
CEA: OK nerds, let's talk triangle weighting.

Fascinating article. In Anglophone countries (US, UK, Canada, Australia, etc.), immigrants...
1. ...tend to pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits;
2. ...are underrepresented in prisons;
3. ...show more upward mobility than immigrants in Europe.
on.ft.com/3QmwwMN

Low 3M inflation in 2023 H2 gave a false signal of where trend was. Likewise, *for now* we should take the firm Q1 with a grain of salt.

A simple YY, or a more sophisticated approach that filters out typical noise, yield similar answers: 2.8-2.9%, so ~ 2 1/2-3% w/ upward bias.

Despite inflation, pandemic & political discord, America's share of world GDP is highest since 2006. Credit productivity, growth, innovation, but also huge, unending deficits. It's pushing up $, interest rates, threatening capital flight from EMs and protectionism vs China.…

smh

Financial imputations are part of the Q1 inflation story--vanilla core PCE ran 64bps hotter than market-based core in Q1 SAAR. It's one reason to weight Y-Y a bit more right now, which is 2.9% core and 2 3/4% market-based core as of Q1. Above target but lower than quarterly.