The Real Reason We Do Not Fear Inflation Now

WTI Crude Oil $67.24 ▼-4.31   -6.41% 2025.04.04 end-of-day

We watch this after we learned. The economy, especially shippers and the consumer, is well aware of the connection between energy and GDP. We don't need the Central Bank to tell us.

Here is the recent CPI-U data from Inflation Data:

2010	2.63%	2.14%	NA	NA	NA	NA	NA	NA	NA	NA	NA	NA	NA
2009	0.03%	0.24%	-0.38%	-0.74%	-1.28%	-1.43%	-2.10%	-1.48%	-1.29%	-0.18%	1.84%	2.72%	-0.34%
2008	4.28%	4.03%	3.98%	3.94%	4.18%	5.02%	5.60%	5.37%	4.94%	3.66%	1.07%	0.09%	3.85%
2007	2.08%	2.42%	2.78%	2.57%	2.69%	2.69%	2.36%	1.97%	2.76%	3.54%	4.31%	4.08%	2.85%

We seem to be retracing out steps back to oil at $140 which would push inflation back to 4-5%. We are not going to do that because as oil rises toward $90/barrel, we deflate sooner than last time. As traders say, the trading range for oil is much reduced.