Stephen Stanley Core Quotations

But certainly the market should be focused on the core number, since that's what the Fed looks at. We're looking for an 0.2 percent increase, which wouldn't cause a big reaction in the market.

We still do not look for the core CPI to accelerate rapidly, but it is likely to be persistently firmer going forward. At a minimum, core consumer price inflation will be firm enough to keep the Fed on edge and raising interest rates.

Fed officials have made clear that their heightened inflation concerns are related more to the outlook than the present situation. Thus, inflation fears have intensified even as core measures of prices have been exceedingly well behaved.

Clearly, Fed officials are more worried about the threatening things that they see (energy spike, eroding slack, etc.) than the benign core consumer price index readings.