The latest Consumer Price Inflation (CPI) numbers are out for March.  The CPI dropped 0.3% from the previous month.  The year-over-year CPI stands at 2.4%.

The more stable median CPI continues to be stable.  The year-over-year median CPI is up 2.5%.  This is the same figure over the last 6 months.

Overall, there is not much to get excited about in either direction.  It looked as if consumer prices were picking up, but March is a slight reversal.

Gold has been rising the last few weeks, but that likely has little to do with price inflation.  It is more of a reflection of Trump’s now reckless foreign policy.

The inflation numbers are not showing any significant trend in either direction.  This means that the Fed will not change its policies unless something else changes.  The Fed will continue to do mostly nothing except roll over maturing debt and occasionally raise its federal funds target rate by one quarter of one percent.  This will be more free money for the banks, as the Fed’s primary tool is paying interest to the banks on their reserves.

While the sentiment on stocks is mostly bullish, there are certainly warning signs out there.  We know stocks are going to fall hard at some point.  It is just a matter of when and how far.

It will be interesting to see what Trump does with the Fed.  If he gets a bill to audit the Fed on his desk, I think he will veto it at this point.  He has done a 180 degree turn on almost everything else, so why not the Fed?  There is already talk that maybe he will just keep Janet Yellen as Fed chair.

If everything is still calm, economically speaking, in late 2017, then I think Trump may just keep her so as not to rattle anything.  If things get ugly before then, then Trump can put blame on Yellen and replace her with the next establishment hack.

The economy overall right now is just kind of sitting there.  There is not much growth.  There is little in the way of really good news or really bad news.  Everything is just puttering along.  Meanwhile, the federal government keeps accumulating more debt and spending huge amounts of money.  Our living standards are far worse off than they should be because of government spending and regulation.

We’ll keep an eye on price inflation to see if there are any significant shifts.  For now, there doesn’t seem to be much happening, but we know things can change quickly.  If I had to bet right now, I think we will see an economic slowdown/ recession before we see a significant increase in consumer price inflation.