by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street
Core services inflation dished up bad head fakes last time we had this mess in 1966-1982. Mention of a rate hike crops up in a Fed speech.
Over the past year or so, the Fed has been intensely discussing inflation in “core services,” which is where inflation had shifted to in 2022, from goods inflation which had spiked into mid-2022 but then cooled dramatically. So “core services” is where it’s at. Core services is where consumers spend the majority of their money. Core services are all services except energy services. Core services inflation has been behaving badly for months, and in January, it spiked out the wazoo.