What to Watch in the CPI Report: Will Inflation Fall Below 3%?
Inflation likely continues to cool. Lots of Americans are still experiencing sticker shock.-- Economists polled by The Wall Street Journal expect the Labor. Department's monthly inflation report will show that overall consumer. prices were up 2.9% in January from a year earlier. That would mark the. -- They estimate that core prices, which exclude food and energy items in an. effort to better track inflation's underlying trend, were up 3.7%, for. The sting of those past price increases might be part of why so many Americans remain down on the economy. An analysis conducted by Goldman Sachs economists suggests that frustration with high price levels might have contributed to low confidence readings that persisted in the early 1980s even after inflation had slipped sharply.Recent monthly readings have been running cooler than a year ago, and economists expect that continued in January. They estimate that overall prices were up a seasonally adjusted 0.2% from the prior month, and core pri