The Economy in the Plastic Bubble

We’re going to leave behind the topic of Cyprus for a day. It does seem as if events are coming to a head, but with banks there closed until Tuesday (and the ECB lifeline in place until Monday), there will be lots of news over the next few days but most of it will be heat without light.

So, speaking of heat and light, let’s look at today’s data. Specifically, let’s look at Existing Home Sales.

While the total sales number fell just shy of the 5mm-unit level, the 4.98mm print still represented the highest number (aside from the home-buyer-tax-credit induced surge in 2009) since 2007 (see chart, source Bloomberg).

The inventory of homes available for sale bounced off of 14-year lows, but remains at levels lower than any we’ve seen in over a decade.

And, near and dear to my heart, the median price of existing homes accelerated from last month (although, due to historical revisions, last month’s y/y was revised down to 10.67%) and stands at 11.34%. The January Home Price Index from FHA also came out; the 6.46% year-on-year rate of increase in that index is also the highest post-2007.

There are long lags between both of these indices and the appearance of price pressures in the Consumer Price Index, but at the moment all indicators of housing point the same direction: Owner’s Equivalent Rent should be in the 2.75% neighborhood by year-end, and could be as high as 3%. This is a key part of our forecast that core CPI should reach 2.6%-3.0% by year-end, and accelerate further in 2014.

The amazing recent run in home prices – which I suspect is driven in part by institutional investor interest in real estate – has caused existing home prices as a multiple of household income to move above levels that prevailed for the last quarter-century of the 20^th century. The housing industry likes to present charts of housing affordability, which takes into account the current level of interest rates, because currently those interest rates make even the relatively high home prices look more affordable.

Yes, I said “relatively high home prices.” The median sales price of existing homes averaged 3.36x median household income from 1975 to 2000, with a relatively small range of values around that average. Even including the bubble, when the multiples reached 4.8x, the average through 2011 only rose to 3.54. As of year-end 2012, the multiple was back to approximately 3.48 and if median prices rise “only” 8% this year (remember, the current pace is 11.3% and rising) the multiple will be around 3.6x by the end of the year (see chart, source U.S. Census Bureau, National Association of Realtors, Enduring Investments).

Notice that even at the depths of the crisis, home prices were only slightly cheap by pre-2000 standards. Similarly, equity prices at the lows only reached approximately fair value by pre-2000 standards. There are two interpretations of this fact set. It could mean that the pre-2000 era valuations were too low, and that modern financial markets and structures make higher valuation multiples permanently viable. Or it could mean that the Federal Reserve continues to artificially support markets at multiples that are not likely to be sustainable in the long run. I suspect the latter point is more accurate, although I am open-minded about whether the former point might have some validity.

This isn’t necessarily a bad strategy, if the idea is to let the market stair-step down to equilibrium rather than letting it crash there all at once. But I don’t see anything that suggests the Federal Reserve has the slightest idea how to value assets. I understand that they don’t want to substitute their own analysis for the market’s judgment (at least, that would be the counterargument), but that’s what they’re doing anyway – with no indication that they plan to back off anytime soon. The Fed is just more comfortable in the bubble, and afraid to leave it entirely. But don’t we have to, eventually?

The VIX returned to 14 today, which makes a bit more sense to me than the 12.7 level of yesterday. It still seems low to me, but at least there is a way for long-vol positions to actually lose.

Honest, Abe?

Today was CPI day, which after Christmas and Thanksgiving is one of my most favorite of days. Here is what I tweeted earlier today (and there’s lots more commentary below):

• unrounded core CPI at +0.18%, a bit higher than what dropped off. Not exactly alarming, but higher than Street expectations.
• y/y core to almost exactly +2.000%. Apparel rose again after the recent rise had slowed in the last couple of months.
• Subindices: ACCEL: Housing, Apparel, Transp, Food/Bev (75.2% of basket). DECEL: Med Care (6.9% of basket). UNCH: Recreation, Comm/Ed, Other
• OER was unch…rise in Housing came from primary rents (that is, you actually pay rent) and lodging away from home.
• Core goods inflation stayed stable at +0.7% y/y; core services stable at +2.5%. I think the former number is going to rise.

This was actually something less than the most exciting CPI report in history. It was better than the Street expected, and although the year/year figure barely nudged higher the components of the number were strong. The rise came from Housing, which ought to continue to accelerate for a while given rental tightness and other forward-looking indicators, and Apparel resumed its rise as well. See the chart below (source: Bloomberg) for the update to what is rapidly becoming one of my favorite inflation-related charts.

The Cleveland Fed’s Median CPI dropped just enough to round down to +2.2% on a y/y basis, and the Atlanta Fed’s “Sticky” CPI is also at 2.2%. These measures are other ways to look at the central tendency of the inflation figures, and suggest that the current 2.0% from the traditional Core CPI is likely to converge higher rather than vice-versa.

But today didn’t change any inflation paradigms.

There was other news, however, that struck me as inflation-related and worth commenting on.

One was a story in the UK Daily Mail citing the case of a Denny’s franchisee (he owns a few dozen Denny’s restaurants) who is planning to add a 5% “Obamacare surcharge” to customer dining checks.

Now, the sum of all of the sales of this man’s Denny’s restaurants is a tiny part of the CPI category “Food away from home,” which is itself a small part of CPI, so it won’t have any impact on the numbers. Even if lots of restaurants followed suit, it wouldn’t have much of an impact since “Food away from home” is only 5.6% of the consumption basket (so a 5% surcharge on all checks would cause a rise in CPI of 0.28%), but it serves as a good reminder of one important point.

The higher taxes and other costs of doing business that are going to be targeted at business is going to show itself to individuals one way or the other. The higher cost of Obamacare compliance, and any other increased business taxes, will not be paid by businesses for the simple reason that businesses are pass-through entities. That is, businesses don’t make money; people who own businesses (partners or shareholders) make money. So whether the higher costs show up as higher prices to the consumer (in which case the government’s attempt to raise revenue from business will result in higher inflation prints, as the transition takes place) or as lower profits to the businesses themselves, the cost will end up being borne by real humans.

At the end of the day, how much of these costs is absorbed by the owners and how much is paid by the consumers is determined by the elasticity of supply and demand for the product. For example, if the elasticity of demand is infinite, then the owners will bear the entire cost; if the elasticity is zero, then consumers will pay it all. My personal guess is that given the current level of gross margins, more of these taxes and higher costs will be paid by owners – implying lower equity earnings – than by consumers, but we will see. But notice that either way, you get lower real earnings. Either nominal earnings fall, or prices rise. Not good for stocks in either case; bad for bonds in the latter case, too.

Then there are the actions of several central banks in the other hemisphere. A story in the Wall Street Journal,  and echoed elsewhere such as in this Australian news outlet, suggests that the Reserve Bank of Australia has adopted a form of QE by allowing its foreign currency reserves to rise in order to push down the currency. The RBA has been one of the bastions, at least relatively, of ‘hard money’ in a world of central banks that have gone wild, so this isn’t a positive development unless you’re long inflation-related assets.

And also hard to miss were the comments by the leader of Japan’s main opposition party, Shinzo Abe, who may become the next prime minister quite soon. Abe suggested that the Bank of Japan should target 3% inflation, rather than 1% inflation, and threatened to revise the law that (supposedly) insulates the BOJ from politics.  Note that 5-year Japanese inflation swaps are near all-time highs, but still only at 0.77%, and 10-year inflation swaps are at only 0.48%. Under Abe’s pressure, we would likely see a substantial acceleration in QE by the BOJ, which has already succeeded in pushing core inflation in Japan from -1.6% to -0.6% over the last two years (see chart, source Bloomberg).

We are increasingly moving into a one-way street for central bank policy. Central bankers are essentially engaging in a sophisticated version of competitive devaluations. The Fed does QE, the BOE does QE, the ECB does QE (but claims it doesn’t), the SNB and BOJ and now the RBA does QE. It is a one-way street because whoever stops printing first will see his currency shoot higher as investors flock to the harder currency. The chart below shows what has happened to the Aussie dollar over the last decade versus the USD. While the strengthening trend was interrupted by the 2008 flight-to-quality, it quickly resumed. Since that time, it has risen roughly 50% (and 100% overall since 2001).

Now, a strong currency is good. It makes foreign goods cheaper and raises the standard of living overall. However, it also hurts exports, which slows the economy and results in visible layoffs while the economy adjusts. There’s only so much of this a country’s politicians are willing to take, and it seems Australia may have reached its limit.

If everyone is printing, exchange rates may not move at all. It has frustrated many dollar bears that the greenback hasn’t declined under the profligate printer Bernanke; printing money is supposed to destroy a currency. It has done so repeatedly over the course of history, and it happens for obvious reasons: when you get a bumper crop of something, its price tends to fall. More supply induces lower prices. In this case, it induces a lower price of a currency unit in terms of other currency units.

But that only happens if the relative supply of a currency is changing. If everyone is printing at roughly the same pace, there is no reason that currencies should move at all relative to each other. They should all fall relative to non-printers, or to hard assets. And that’s why it’s even more incredible that commodities are not shooting higher. Yet.

Those effects, in my view, absolutely swamp in importance the weak growth news we’re getting these days. Today, the Philly Fed report and Initial Claims were both quite weak, but the data is going to be polluted by hurricane Sandy for a while and hard to interpret. I don’t think the hurricane had anything to do with this story, or its timing for that matter:

FHA Needs Bailout From Treasury to Plug Budget, Bachus Says

“Nov. 15 (Bloomberg) — The Federal Housing Administration will need billions of dollars in aid from the U.S. Treasury before the end of the year to fill a financial hole caused by defaults on mortgages it insures, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Spencer Bachus said today.

“… The agency is “burning through” its last $600 million and FHA officials have briefed him that they will need a financial backstop within a month, the Alabama Republican said during a press conference in Washington.”

So, we are trying to figure out how to raise a trillion dollars over ten years to start closing the budget gap, but it helps to remember that there are other groups who are going to be bellying up to the bar for a hit of government help. The FHA, the postal service (-$15.9bln this year, although they expect to lose only $7bln next year), probably California before long. We’d better get our act together quickly…but as yet, there is no sign of it. Nice of Bachus to wait until less than a month before the FHA runs out of money to mention this, by the way.

And I haven’t even mentioned the sudden explosion of violence in Israel, which doesn’t give the impression of a fire that will quickly burn out. It may not spin out of control, either, but it bears watching very closely since our influence in the region has significantly ebbed since the change of control in Egypt, our exit from Iraq, and our distancing from Israel.

I don’t think 2013 is shaping up to be a very fun year. But we’re not there yet!

A Summary Of My Post-CPI Tweets

This is a summary of my Post-CPI tweets today. You can follow me @inflation_guy.

• Core CPI +0.146%, just barely missing the soft +0.2% people were looking for. But y/y still rose to 2.0%.
• that dip in core is over – next several months have easy year-ago comps.
• Services inflation +0.3%, as is Housing. It’s only core commodities that’s a drag now (+0.0% after -0.1% last month).
• Rents (both primary and OER) rose +0.2% and the y/y rise matches core inflation at 2.1%. The inflation-sapping bust is over.
• unrounded y/y core CPI: 1.988%.
• Y/Y core services inflation is 2.5%. Y/Y core goods is +0.7%. It was services that dragged core down in 2009-10. That’s over. [Note: see Chart, source BLS, below]
• accelerating subgroups: Housing, Apparel, Transport, Recreation (66.2%). Decelerating: Food&Bev, Other (20.2%). Med Care & Educ/Comm unch.
• Both primary rents (+2.7% y/y) and OER (+2.1% y/y) are accelerating – by which I mean they are inflating at a faster y/y pace.
• Median CPI from the Cleveland Fed was +0.2%, and the y/y rate steady at 2.3%. The recent disinflation is an illusion.

The first supplementary chart is for core goods and core services. The sum of these two (weighted, of course) is core CPI. As you can see, it was the decline in the core services component (notably housing) that drove the decline in core CPI in the late ‘Aughts; the overall core number was temporarily kept afloat by the rise in core goods, but the crisis caused that to collapse as well.

Over the last couple of years, core services have returned to 2.5%, and core inflation is only as low as 2% now because core goods prices have begun to decline again. However, taking a broader view, it appears to me that the disinflation in goods from the early 90s to the early 00s is over and that goods prices are gradually taking a higher track. I’ve written previously about the possibility that the “globalization dividend” in terms of disinflationary pressures has shown some signs of ebbing. Obviously, should core goods inflation return to the levels it achieved a year ago (2.2% in November and December), overall core inflation would be comfortably above 2% even if core services inflation did not continue to accelerate.

In a non-CPI related note, New York Fed President Bill Dudley said today that the Fed won’t be “hasty” to pull back easy money: “If we were to see some good news on growth I would not expect us to respond in a hasty manner.” This confirms what we already knew – the Fed is willing to risk letting the inflation genie out of the bottle. Now, faster growth is not actually causal of inflation, as I frequently point out, so not responding to growth is ironically the right strategy, but it’s important to consider the reasons he gives for this policy. He is not saying that the Fed will not respond to growth because growth is not something they can affect; what he’s actually saying is that (since the Fed believes they can affect growth meaningfully) there is a very high hurdle to tightening even if prices accelerate somewhat further as long as growth remains slow.

So in what I think is the most likely case, continued slow growth with rising inflation, the Fed wouldn’t likely start to tighten the screws until core inflation was near 3% (and more importantly, until the economists who are modeling inflation as a function of growth decide they’re wrong, and stop forecasting a decline from whatever level we are at today). Since there is a significant delay of at least 6 months from Fed action to any effect on prices, this means that core inflation could easily get comfortably above 3% before any Fed action took effect – and, with the amount of money they’d need to withdraw, and the likelihood that they would start timidly, I have no idea how long it would take for them to stop an inflationary process which, at that point, would have considerable momentum.

So, in summary, this will not be the last uptick we see in core inflation.

CPI: Summary Of My Tweets

Tweets from @inflation_guy on the CPI release, and added detail:

• Core CPI was +0.24%, barely missing an +0.3% print (interestingly, Bloomberg no longer calculates beyond the 1st decimal).
• Y/Y core 2.31%, which is “as expected”…except that economists were looking for a round UP to 2.3%.
• Core ex-housing is no longer as important as it was…since housing is close to fair now…but it’s 2.36% y/y.
• …that’s actually the highest Core CPI y/y print yet. We’ve had 2.3%, 2.2%, 2.3% and 2.3%, but the first two 2.3% were up-rounders.
• …and means 17 of last 18 months we’ve seen y/y core CPI increase.
• Accelerating groups: Apparel, Educ/Comm, Other (15.4%). Decelerating: Food/Bev, Transport, Recreation (37.4%). Unch: Med Care, Housing

The hurdle next month to push year-on-year core CPI higher for the 18th of the last 19th months is challenging. In May 2011, core CPI threw the highest print since 2008: +0.252% (rounded to +0.3%). That being said, this month’s print was the third-highest since 2008, so it’s not a complete reach.

Some observers will focus on the last 3 months of core CPI, which were +0.098%, +0.230%, and +0.242%, projecting to a relatively-calming 2.3% annualized – which is what it appears we’ve done, stabilize right on the Fed’s target. But it appears the February number was the aberration. Annualizing the last four months would give us 2.4% (January’s change was +0.218%), and annualizing just these last two months gives us 2.8%. I don’t recommend playing around too much with annualization, but I point this out because popular opinion will try and pretend the +0.098% was wasn’t an outlier.

Another way you can get a sense for the acceleration of inflation, and the easy potential for further inflation, is to look at the median monthly print and annualize. (This isn’t the same as the Cleveland Fed’s “Median CPI” - that indicator is looking at the median one-month change of all of the goods and services prices collected by the BLS.) What I am doing in the chart below is looking at the median month-on-month print from the last 12 monthly releases, and annualizing that figure. You can see that the number no longer looks like it has leveled off.

What that suggests is that the recent failure of inflation to continue rising on a year-on-year basis is due to the low prints that are “tail events” on the downside, and not because the overall process of inflation has somehow been magically arrested at the Fed’s target.

Inflation: As ‘Contained’ As An Arrow From A Bow

Is 15 months in a row of rising core inflation ‘contained?’

Year-on-year core CPI has now risen for 15 consecutive months. At some point, it will seem reasonable to let it have a month off, but until now it hasn’t needed it. Fifteen months in a row. That’s impressive. It’s so impressive, in fact, that it hasn’t happened since 1973-1974, when prices were catching up from the failed experiment of price controls imposed by President Nixon in 1971-73. Core inflation has never, in the history of the data (which exists since 1957), accelerated for 16 consecutive months. So, next month we have a chance for a record!

Headline inflation was softer-than-expected by 0.1%, even as the NSA CPI index itself came in higher-than-expected. As I pointed out yesterday,  that was a semi-predictable consequence of the change to new seasonal adjustment factors. Core inflation was 0.218% month-on-month, however, which actually generated a rise in the rounded year-on-year index to 2.3% (2.277% to three decimal places). The table below shows the evolution of the year-on-year changes for the eight major subgroups from 6 months ago to 3 months ago to last month, to now.

	Weights	y/y change	prev y/y change	3m y/y chg	6m y/y chg
All items	100.0%	2.925%	2.962%	3.525%	3.629%
Food and beverages	15.0%	4.212%	4.452%	4.470%	4.001%
Housing	40.2%	1.876%	1.874%	1.869%	1.453%
Apparel	3.5%	4.664%	4.573%	4.194%	3.056%
Transportation	16.5%	4.961%	5.197%	9.185%	11.980%
Medical care	6.9%	3.605%	3.491%	3.116%	3.199%
Recreation	5.9%	1.372%	1.027%	0.253%	-0.173%
Education and communication	6.7%	1.838%	1.670%	1.371%	0.982%
Other goods and services	5.3%	1.740%	1.701%	1.660%	0.847%

Compared to last month, Apparel, Medical Care, Recreation, and Education/Communication accelerated, groups which total 23% of the consumption basket. Transportation and Food & Beverages both decelerated, and they total 31.5% of the basket. Now, notice that Transportation and Food & Beverages are the two groups that are most affected by direct commodity costs – energy and food, respectively. So…don’t get too excited by the deceleration there, although new and used motor vehicles and other components of Transportation also decelerated and that doesn’t have much to do with energy prices. In Food & Beverages, “Food at home” is decelerating (about 57% of the Food & beverages category) while “Food away from home” and “Alcoholic beverages” (the balance of the category) are accelerating.

Yes, you can get eyestrain looking too closely at these figures, but doing so does help.

For example, one theme I think the Fed is counting on is that the “Housing” component of CPI is expected to decelerate due to the still-high inventory of unsold homes and the fact that foreclosure sales can now proceed. It has been a conundrum why rents have been rising while home prices stagnate (actually, not much of a conundrum: there is an underlying inflation dynamic that in the case of the housing-asset market is being overwhelmed by a decline in multiples. But this is a conundrum to the Fed, and to be fair I also expected Housing inflation to be lower than it has been recently). And in this month’s data, you can see that the year-on-year increase in Housing CPI flattened out. But, as the table below shows, the Shelter component wasn’t what flattened out. Housing only went sideways because the “Fuels and Utilities” component declined – again, a commodity effect.

	Weights	y/y change	prev y/y change	3m y/y chg	6m y/y chg
Housing	40.2%	1.876%	1.874%	1.869%	1.453%
Shelter	30.92%	1.983%	1.905%	1.792%	1.399%
Fuels and utilities	5.27%	1.941%	2.432%	3.483%	3.201%
Household furnishings and operations	4.03%	1.035%	1.000%	0.561%	-0.224%

I still expect Housing inflation to level out and probably to decline, but so far those expectations have been dashed. It will be uncomfortable for the Fed if it remains this way; a significant part of their expectations for a visually-contained core inflation number is (mathematically) due to the expectation that housing inflation isn’t going to keep rising. As you can see in the chart below (Source: Enduring Investments http://www.enduringinvestments.com), the rest of core inflation outside of Shelter is continuing to rise. Inflation is not ‘contained’, except maybe for housing. Maybe.

I am fairly confident, though, that if Housing inflation does not decelerate as expected, then the Fed will find some other reason to ignore the very clear acceleration in inflation. The economists at the FRB are for the most part true believers in the notion that the output gap constrains any possible acceleration in inflation, despite ample evidence that output gaps don’t matter (or, anyway, matter far less than monetary variables). For another view of this proposition, see the Chart below, taken from this article by economist John Cochrane.

Fed economists also feel strongly that “well-anchored inflation expectations” means that they can ignore 15-month trends in core inflation, despite the fact that by Chairman Bernanke’s own admission we aren’t really very good at measuring inflation expectations (to be kind).

They have time. The Fed has recently begun to treat 2% (on core PCE, not core CPI) as more of a floor than a target, so it will be some months, even if core inflation doesn’t pause for a month or two pretty soon, before the Committee starts getting at all warm under the collar about inflation. Even then, they are extremely unlikely to take steps to reduce liquidity while Unemployment remains high. The Fed is in a political bind, and the only easy path for them is to “see no evil” on inflation while hoping that Unemployment drops swiftly enough for them to act before prices really get out of hand. We will see.

Price-A-Palooza

The monthly price-a-palooza from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, coinciding with the auction of $15bln in new 10-year TIPS, also shared the day with Housing Starts and Initial Claims. Dispensing with those two details first: Housing Starts was 657k, which was a disappointing shortfall after the strong NAHB number on Wednesday. Initial Claims looked strong, at 352k, but this comes with two caveats that are really the same caveat. The first is that the prior week’s claims were over 400k; the second is that year-end seasonal adjustment to these figures makes them nearly useless. It is probably most-useful (which is to say, only barely useful at all) to think of the last two weeks together and figure that the current pace of Claims is “about” 375k, right in the middle. This would coincidentally be consistent with the level of claims prior to the year-end volatility (see Chart, Source Bloomberg).

Also out was CPI, of course. Headline CPI was unchanged on a seasonally-adjusted basis, but Core CPI came in as-expected at +0.1% keeping the year-on-year rate at 2.2%. “Stabilization!” screamed the pundits, but it isn’t yet so. Core CPI was actually up 0.145% before rounding, which means we were a mere 0.005% from what would have been considered a surprise for the cheerleaders on CNBC. The year-on-year figure, too, rose nearly a tenth, from 2.153% for the year ended in November to 2.230% for the year ended in December. Rounding giveth and rounding taketh away! Yes, a rise in the year/year pace of only 0.08% represents a modest slowing, but that would still add a full percent to core CPI over the next year were it to persist.

It probably will not persist, because housing is going to begin to act like ballast on the number over the next few weeks, but core ex-housing is already at 2.46% and I see few reasons to expect it to not continue its rise.

In any event, we should remember that the 1.6% rise in core inflation over the last 14 months is the fastest such rise since 1984. A little respect, please, for the inflation process. I know it doesn’t always act like an instant-gratification video game, but looking at the chart of 14-month changes, below, can you tell me that this advance is so shaky that stabilization is automatic from here? I didn’t think so.

Rolling 14-mo absolute change in core CPI

.

A chart of the current y/y changes and the previous y/y changes is shown below.

	Weights	y/y change	prev y/y change
All items	100.0%	2.962%	3.394%
Food and beverages	14.8%	4.452%	4.373%
Housing	41.5%	1.874%	1.918%
Apparel	3.6%	4.573%	4.763%
Transportation	17.3%	5.197%	8.024%
Medical care	6.6%	3.491%	3.370%
Recreation	6.3%	1.027%	0.348%
Educ & Communication	6.4%	1.670%	1.418%
Other goods and services	3.5%	1.701%	1.858%

As you can see, Food & Beverages, Medical Care, Recreation, and Education & Communication, which collectively represent 34.1% of the basket, are still accelerating. Transportation (mostly because of energy), Apparel, and Other (24.4%) are decelerating. Housing looks like it is a wash, but it isn’t really, yet:

	Weights	y/y change	prev y/y change
Housing	41.5%	1.874%	1.918%
Shelter	31.96%	1.905%	1.839%
Fuels and utilities	5.10%	2.432%	3.423%
Household furnishings & operations	4.41%	1.000%	0.767%

As you can see, most of the apparent slowdown in Housing is also in the energy sector, while Shelter is still rising. If we put 32.4% as “accelerating” and 5.1% as “decelerating”, then we still have 2/3rds of the basket accelerating. Again, that won’t be the case for long, but it is early to call the end of the inflation rise. Note also that the Median CPI put out by the Cleveland Fed actually ticked up to 2.3%, so it is above core CPI (although for all intents and purposes, tied).

There is a reason that many models are calling for a flattening out of core “soon.” The most-honest reason is that some models establish an important role for “anchored” inflation expectations. I am familiar with the literature on inflation anchoring, and I find it completely unpersuasive. I also do not believe in poltergeists. Both theories seem to explain certain phenomena, but neither has compelling empirical data to back them up. While it does seem that poll respondents “anchor” their responses (and it seems they anchor them to the most-recently-released figure that all media trumpet), there is not any evidence that consumers and producers actually change their behavior at all because of that “anchoring.” However, if it’s in your model, it’s one reason you might think that core inflation above 2% ought to begin reining itself in.

The sneakier reason that some economists are calling for a flattening out of core inflation is that we all can see the conditions in the rental markets, and that follows the recent renewed downturn in housing prices which is due to the inventory overhang. So it’s easy to say “Core won’t reach 3% soon.” It would be remarkable if it did. Indeed, it’s remarkable it’s already this high given that it has the unwind of an epic bubble to deal with. The current 2.23% core rate is above what our models expected to see realized for 2011, because shelter inflation rose more than we expected. What’s more interesting is to forecast what is going to happen to core ex-shelter, which is already above the Fed’s target and rising.

Our models take note of the fact that 52-week M2 money growth is now at 10.71%, just slightly high of a one week peak above that level in January 2009. Before that, and a dramatic one-week spike in September 2001 (wonder what that could have been?), you have to go back all the way to 1982 to find faster year/year money growth. Unlike last year, too, it’s not all going into the vault – corporate credit growth over the last year is now up over 3% and still rising. So in my opinion, is probably too early to send the hawks back to the eyrie.

Remarkably, my measure of the spread of perceived inflation over actual measured inflation – I think of it as sort of an ‘angst’ index – reached an all-time low (going back 12 years) this month. The index is driven by, among other things, the volatility of price changes and the dispersion of price changes. In other words, inflation has been rising in a comparatively stealthy, orderly way, which tends to diminish our sensitivity to it. Not unlike a frog being cooked in water that is being brought slowly to boil, come to think of it.

And yet, with everyone telling us not to worry about inflation, with 10-year real yields negative, with dealer risk-appetites still low, and with headline inflation tumbling back down to only 3%, the Treasury today sold $15bln 10-year TIPS 3bps better through the screens at the bidding deadline. Dealer demand was strong, as was the overall bid:cover. Someone wants inflation protection here!

On Friday, Existing Home Sales (Consensus: 4.65mm vs 4.42mm last) is the only data. I think we are also supposed to hear about the private-sector cram-down from Greece. The word was that there was supposed to be an agreement “by the end of the week,” but come to think of it I guess maybe they didn’t say which week! In any event, conditions look good for a return of the 10-year yield above 2% (closed today at 1.97%). While calamity can strike at any time, a fair amount of calamity is already priced into Treasuries. Moreover, it’s only calamity of a deflationary kind, not a calamity of an inflationary kind…and it isn’t at all clear that that is the most likely kind of calamity here.