It will be important over the next 8 months to watch the monetary base and the excess reserves held by commercial banks.  Although there are other factors, these two charts will give us a good idea of how much new money is being injected into the economy.  The more money that enters, the higher prices will go.

Again, this isn’t the only factor.  Velocity, or the demand for money, plays a huge role (more on that in the future), but the supply of new dollars in the economy will have a major impact on consumer prices.

We need to watch what Bernanke and the Fed do, not just what they say.

For the adjusted monetary base, go here:
http://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/usfd/page3.pdf

For the excess reserves, go here:
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?chart_type=line&s[1][id]=EXCRESNS&s[1][range]=1yr