The CBO Says Inflation Is Almost Over
The Congressional Budget Office thinks that rapid inflation is almost over, but is the economy still riding for a fall?
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The most stunning forecast in the Congressional Budget Office’s The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2022-2023 is that rapid inflation is almost over. What the agency calls personal consumption expenditures (PCE) will rise 4.0% this year and 2.3% next year. From 2024 to 2026, the figure will rise only 2.0%.
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Oddly, gross domestic product growth, one signal inflation has not disappeared, will rise 3.1% this year. That will dip to 2.2% in 2023, a substantial deceleration. Unemployment, another factor often coupled with inflation, will continue to fall to a steady 3.5%. The labor force will continue to grow.
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The CBO is not the only organization that believes inflation will fall off soon. However, the Federal Reserve fears otherwise. The central bank will raise rates by 0.5% at least two more times. A consensus is growing that this will tip the economy into recession.
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Forecasters cannot eat their cake and have it too. Rising rates may tame inflation but will damage the economy. High inflation will undermine consumer and business spending. Either way, the economy is riding for a fall.
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Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.
McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.
His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.
A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.
TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.
McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.
