U.S. consumer prices rise moderately in January

Washington (US), February 11: US consumer prices rose moderately in January, primarily driven by higher gasoline prices, the U.S. Labor Department reported Wednesday.
The consumer price index (CPI) increased 0.3 percent in January following a revised 0.2 percent gain in December 2020, the department said.
Gasoline index rose 7.4 percent last month, accounting for most of the increase in consumer prices over the month, according to the department.
Excluding the volatile food and energy categories, the so-called core CPI was unchanged in January. Over the past year, the CPI was up 1.4 percent.
"While off to a meager start, we expect inflation to ramp up this year as spending takes off and inflation expectations show businesses and consumers are positioned for higher prices," Sarah House and Shannon Seery, economists at Wells Fargo Securities, wrote Wednesday in an analysis.
"We look for headline CPI to run north of 3 percent in Q2, driven by higher energy costs and low base effects. While the 12-month rate of inflation should ease over the summer, we expect the CPI to run around 2.5 percent year-over-year in the back half of 2021, with the core index firming," they wrote.
U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell on Wednesday signaled that the central bank will not tighten monetary policy without seeing a substantial increase in inflation.
"Inflation has been much lower and more stable over the past three decades than in earlier times," Powell said at a virtual event, adding the Fed will maintain a "patiently accommodative monetary policy stance" to boost the labor market recovery.
Source: Xinhua