Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

"Inflation cooled, lower than expected," read the financial press on the release of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for July. One only needs to look carefully: when month-to-month changes are down, those alone get the headline. When they are up, as they are in July, the headline focuses on the 12-month trend. Every time.

Based on the data release we have, the "cooling" is actually up from June to July, if you can believe it.

(Data: Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED), St. Louis Fed; Chart: Jeffrey A. Tucker)

Most of the change is driven by housing but the CPI is far from capturing the whole. By using a black-box statistic called Owners Equivalent Rent, the CPI is able to completely bypass and not report data we actually have on housing prices. And that's just the start of the problems we've discussed many times. Even so, the CPI still reveals something. Even then, we keep being told life is better than ever.