Capital Perspectives: The Fed fiddles as inflation burns - NewsBreak

It's not transitory. In early August, amid chatter from U.S. Federal Reserve Bank officials and market commentators alike that concerns about persistently high inflation were unwarranted, we expressed skepticism in our column Inflation – What Would Milton Say? We acknowledged at the time that the Fed was correct to point to temporary economic reopening supply-demand disruptions in areas like used cars and airfares. In fact, this is already playing out. In the most recently released Consumer Price Index (CPI) data for August 2021, used vehicles and transportation services prices declined 1.5% and 2.3%, respectively versus July.