Subject: Re: Disinflation, with the right measure
* The underlying monetary (not product specific) MCT inflation in the US was remarkably steady from July 2023 to August 2025 at around 2.8%, give or take a very small margin.
* It recently start to fall, sharply, now for three months running...

Just a follow up to this post about (a) the potential merits of watching MCT inflation, and (b) that it was showing strong signs of disinflation at the time.

With the latest year-on-year figure at 2.84% for December, it has bounced right back up to the rate that has been typical since mid 2023. All of goods, services, and housing bounced. One possible interpretation is that we just saw a few bad data points, but who knows.

If you ignore the 3 dippy monthly figures that I mentioned previously, it's basically "no news for 2.5 years, US monetary inflation is still steady at very close to 2.8%". Even though some particular things have had big price changes specific to those things.

Jim