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Wednesday, December 15, 2010

SBE Council Economist on November CPI Numbers and FOMC

Raymond J. Keating, chief economist for the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council (SBE Council), offered the following statement in reaction to the CPI inflation numbers released this morning by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and yesterday's FOMC statement:

"When it comes to inflation, there's good news and potentially bad news. The good news is that November CPI inflation registered a mere 0.1 percent, with inflation for the past year running at only 1.1 percent.

"As for the potentially bad news, that's about inflation down the road. On December 14, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) reiterated that its quantitative easing would continue, and that the Bernanke Fed believes inflation is too low.

"Great danger lurks given the Fed's unprecedented and now continuing monetary expansion since late summer 2008. We're seeing this reflected in the marketplace given the run up in oil and gold prices. Unfortunately, once the Fed lets inflation out of the bottle, it is a painful process to stuff it back in."

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