When? He bragged in July when the MoM rate was zero and the YoY rate fell by half a percent. I can't find him bragging anywhere that the rate is holding steady though.
Can't tell if he's trying to say that it only went up a little in September ("was 8.2 before"), but if he is then he's wrong - the YoY rate has come down every month since July.[1] So we still haven't passed the second derivative (which he did brag about in January apparently).
The MoM rate (the amount prices increased in July) was zero (down from 1.3% in June), not -0.5%, meaning that prices stayed the same. If it had been -0.5%, that would have meant prices decreased in July by half a percent. The YoY rate is what fell by 0.6% (not 0.5% like I thought), meaning that prices had risen a total of 8.5% since July 2021, a decrease from 9.1% in June (vs. June 2021).
>0.9% in October, 0.8% in November and 0.5% in December, according to the Labor Department.
Definitely similarly tone deaf, but in this case he was bragging about the second derivative, not the third - prices continued to increase, but the rate of increase (inflation) was indeed falling.
Errmm? He says “we are making progress in slowing the rate of price increases”.
(making progress in (slowing the (rate of price increases)))
3 ————————— 2 ————— 1 ———————————
The question is what you think “progress” is doing in that sentence. Slowing the rate => 2nd deriv is decreasing but progress, to me, implies that third deriv is what is being pointed at. 2nd deriv would be “we are slowing” to me.
I’m not sure what inflation number you’re looking at, but CPI for Oct/Nov/Dec of 2021 was: 6.2%, 6.8%, 7%
Rate of increase in prices = inflation = first derivative of prices. Slowing the rate of increase in prices = lowering inflation = second derivative. I wouldn't interprete 'making progress in lowering the rate of increase' as 'lowering the rate of increase of the rate of increase' which is basically how you'd have to read that to get to the third derivative. As the article points out, Biden was talking about MoM inflation, I quoted the numbers there for those months. They're in the article.
