Deflation, what deflation?
Four themes have hogged the headlines this year – Greece, China, the Fed and linking these three topics…the risk of deflation and associated damage to the global economy.
At the risk of over-simplifying a complex picture, what is striking is that global headline and core inflation have actually been pretty well behaved (see Figure 1). Further analysis shows that headline and core inflation have evolved in reasonably narrow ranges since early 2013 in the world’s largest developed economies as well as China and Mexico. The fact these inflation data series are a little boring is in itself noteworthy given that central banks typically favour low and stable inflation. Read more