General Discussion

There's always going to be inflation. Even out of the Great Recession, we only had one year (2009) where we actually saw deflation on average for the year.

But we're averaging a 3.3% increase so far this year (and it's gone up each of the last three months). If it stays at that 3.3%, that would be the largest yearly average since 2008 when you exclude 2021, 2022 and 2023.

Not counting 2021, 2022 and 2023, even March's 3.5% is higher than we're used to seeing. The last time we hit that total (again, not counting 2021, 2022 and 2023) for a monthly gain was October, 2011.

So, in the context of the last 13 years, even this month is generally high.

We don't need to break even but yes, inflation probably needs to get below 2%, where it was for 108 months before 2021 and so far there's no evidence of that happening.

So, expect the Fed to not lower interest rates.