May 09, 2014
In a mostly useful article on the problems facing the euro zone economy, Neil Irwin again raises the prospect that a shock could turn the inflation rate negative.
“The lowflation, as people have taken to calling it, is particularly dangerous in that it could easily turn into outright deflation, or falling prices, should one nasty shock come along. For example, if tension between Ukraine and Russia boils over into a full-scale war, it could easily tip the European economy back into recession and send prices tumbling.”
It’s not clear what he is talking about here. If a war between Russia and Ukraine threw the European economy into a recession it would be just as bad news for the countries of the region if the inflation rate were now 2.0 percent instead of 0.5 percent. The problem would be a new recession in an area that is already suffering from very high unemployment. The decline in the inflation rate from a low positive to a low negative is a non-issue.
The inflation rate is already lower than would be desired, any further fall makes matters worse, but crossing zero means nothing except for numerologists. Accelerating deflation could be a problem, but we have seen exactly zero instances of this phenomenon in the last 70 years in wealthy countries.
It is worth noting that many economists if they are honest in their beliefs (I know, absurd proposition) must already think that the euro zone inflation rate is negative. The Boskin Commission, which was warmly received by the leading lights in the economics profession, claimed that the consumer price index in the United States overstated inflation by 1.1 percentage points annually. Most of the problems they identified are still present and likely to be worse with European price measurements than in the United States.
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