America's inflation risks

Stephen Roach | Yale University | 24 October 2018

It was inevitable. Another upturn in the US inflation cycle is at hand. Since the Great Disinflation of the early 1980s, when the annual increase in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) plunged from 14.7% in March 1980 to 2.4% in July 1983, inflation has generally remained in a relatively narrow 1% to 5% range for a quarter century. When the economy softened, inflation slid to the lower end of that range, and when it strengthened in the late 1980s and late ...