Inflation Has Fallen Faster Than Many Experts Thought Possible
36 minutes ago
Back in December 2022, officials at the Federal Reserve gave their best estimates for how fast inflation would be rising at the end of 2023. The median answer out of their best guesses was that prices, as measured by the Personal Consumption Expenditures index, would have risen 3.1% by the end of the year.
The actual number, reported Friday, would have seemed wildly optimistic back then. Indeed, only one out of the 19 members of the Federal Open Market Committee who made guesses correctly predicted that it would fall to 2.6%.
Predictions of rapidly cooling inflation were rare back in 2022. Price increases spiked in June of that year to the highest since 1981 and only had slowly begun to retreat.
One of the economists predicting a rapid downshift in inflation was James Knightley, chief…
