American inflation looks increasingly worrying

Jerome Powell’s press conferences—sometimes market-moving events—have attracted less notice of late. With Donald Trump in the White House, the chair of the Federal Reserve faces competition for attention. Yet a recent inflation reading has returned prices to the public eye. In January America’s “core” consumer-price index, which strips out volatile food and energy costs, jumped by 5.5% at an annualised rate. In response, Larry Summers, a former treasury secretary, called this the “riskiest period for inflation policy since the early Biden administration”, after which inflation rose to its highest in four decades.