The Homa Files

“Don’t blame me, blame the Pandemic and Putin”
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OK, I paraphrased the 2nd quote a bit, but that’s the gist of his inflation speech last week.

Today, let’s look at the Biden’s lead assertion … that inflation isn’t isolated to the U.S. … it’s a worldwide problem.

He implies — and sometimes says — that’s proof positive that his policies have nothing to do with the problem.

Really?

True, inflation is evident in the major OECD countries — Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and the UK — but there’s a “but” … and it’s a big “but”.

The economic research group at the San Francisco Fed (FRBSF) recently published an analysis that concluded:

Before the pandemic, U.S. core CPI inflation remained, on average, about 1 percentage point above the OECD sample average.

Early in 2021, however, U.S. inflation increasingly diverged from the other countries.

U.S. core CPI grew from below 2% to  4.7% (in Q3, 2021).

In contrast, the OECD average increased at a more gradual rate from around 1% to 2.2% (over the same period).

First, a couple of technical points:

• For data comparability, the FRBSF analysis focuses on the core CPI … which excludes energy and food.
• Restricted by the timing of data availability, the FRBSF analysis only runs through the 3rd quarter of 2021 … all before Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
• Since 2021-Q3, the year-over-year core CPI has increased from 4.7% to 6.2% … and, including food & energy, the year-over-year inflation number is over 8%

Those points notwithstanding, the FRBSF analysis is quite revealing.

• During 2019, pre-pandemic, the core inflation rate hovered around 2% in the U.S.
• In 2020,  the U.S. core inflation rate actually dropped to about 1.5% … lower than the pre-pandemic rate.
• Post-Biden’s inauguration in early 2021, the U.S. core inflation rate increased from 1.5% to 4.7% in Q3, 2021 … an increase of 3.2 percentage points.
• During that same period, the average OECD core inflation rate increased from 1.5% to 2.2% … an increase of .7 of a percentage point.

Bottom line: Given a U.S. core inflation rate of 4.7% … and using the 2.2% OECD average as a baseline for “global inflation” …  only about 20% of the U.S. core inflation rate increase since early 2021 is statistically attributable to common global inflation pressures (.7 percentage points divided by 3.2 percentage points equals 21.8%).

Said differently, about 80% of the U.S. core inflation rate increase since early 2021 is statistically attributable to factors specific to the U.S.

Sorry, Joe.

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Next up: So, what are those specific factors?

This entry was posted on May 16, 2022 at 7:45 am and is filed under Bidenomics, inflation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.