… if we\u2019ve avoided rerunning the 1930s only to end up with a repeat of the 1970s, the public will judge… [Ben Bernanke] to have failed.<\/p>\n
To this, the Fed has a stock response. It points to the all-urban consumer price index (CPI-U) and notes that it was up only 2.7 percent in March relative to the same month a year earlier. Strip out the costs of food and energy, and \u201ccore CPI\u201d\u009d\u201d\u201dthe Fed\u2019s preferred measure\u201d\u201dis just 1.2 percent. When Google unveils its new index of online prices, it\u2019s likely to tell a similar story.<\/p>\n
To ordinary Americans, however, it\u2019s not the online price of an iPad that matters; it\u2019s prices of food on the shelf and gasoline at the pump. These, after all, are the costs they encounter most frequently. And with average gas prices hitting $3.88 a gallon last week, filling up is now twice as painful as when President Obama took office.<\/p>\n