Stop waiting for things to get cheaper. Be grateful they won't

Telegraph

22-03-2025

Take hot inflation. The war on fast-rising prices has been won, we beat it. There should have been a parade, with central bank interns twerking in the street as confetti rained... Yet few celebrated and even fewer accept the victory.
Economists, politicos and pundits wrong-headedly sweat 'sticky' services prices and rising wages, especially after January's consumer prices index (CPI) pick-up saw inflation return to 3pc. Consumers lament sky-high food prices that refuse to fall and everyone regards April's minimum wage and employer National Insurance contribution rise as a ticking timebomb.
Yes, inflation has hammered households since 2021. Horrid, full stop. Prices at the end of January were an eye-watering 24.8pc above those recorded in December 2019. (Don't forget CPI understates many people's experience). Wretched indeed.
A military war ending doesn't mean the destruction the war caused is somehow reversed, it only means no new destruction. Ditto with inflation.
Prices and inflation are different. Inflation is the speed of changing prices, now 3pc year-on-year, based on CPI. But while the rate of inflation can fall, prices tend not to. Select categories may, but falling prices – deflation – well, developed nations don't do that. Why?
Significant deflation means depression, which is a far deadlier war. Reversing CPI's post-pandemic rise means approximating 1929-33's deflation or the early 1920s' post-First World War downturn.
Do you really want that? Didn't think so.
Winning the inflation war was never about dropping prices, just slowing the rise.
Like its global peers, the Bank of England (BoE) actively wants 2pc annual inflation as it helps reduce the real value of existing debt repayment a lot – about £56bn per year, or half the size of the annual deficit. Whitehall wins; you lose.
Yet any time the rate tops 3pc, Andrew Bailey must write to Rachel Reeves explaining it. According to BoE forecasts, the governor will have to whip out his pen later in 2025, with inflation set to peak at 3.7pc.
You'll recall this is tame compared to CPI's 11.1pc peak from October 2022. What's more, forecasts are squishy and measures are notoriously inexact (usually wrong) and were so even before the Office for National Statistics' (ONS) problems when Labour Force Survey response rates came to light.
Still, spare a thought for Bailey when he writes that letter. No evidence exists – none, zero, zip – proving the BoE or any central bank can fine-tune inflation or any other measure precisely, or that the indexes are even accurately reflective.
You know that yourself, given how the energy price cap jacked up CPI and everyone's living costs. Contrary to sales pitches from Ed Miliband and Theresa May, it didn't cap prices, it raised them, forcing suppliers out of business as wholesale gas prices rose, squashing competition and turning the ceiling into a target that lagged market prices.
In 2022, that meant huge household cost increases when the cap reset. In 2023, it meant household costs stayed high months after oil and gas prices fell, keeping Britain's CPI far above America's.
Other factors pushing January's CPI higher are similarly beyond the BoE's control. Bailey didn't slap VAT on private school fees or lift the bus fare cap.
The BoE can't manage olive harvests and other factors raising the price of cooking fats, nor can it set postal rates or make global airfares fall. But in terms of inflation's main fuel – and the one factor the BoE can influence – the 'war' is indeed over.
Inflation is simply too much money chasing too few goods and services, recorded with a time lag. In different terms, this is the money supply growth rate exceeding GDP growth rate, the one factor always caused by the BoE that it never, ever takes responsibility for, despite all that letter writing.
During 2020's Covid chaos, the BoE bizarrely ballooned money supply. The flagship M4 gauge topped 10pc year-on-year for 12 straight months, peaking at 15.3pc in February 2021. Soon, prices galloped. The madness was global. US M4 peaked above 30pc.
Eventually, the BoE slowed down. Now it grows a healthy 4.4pc, on par with or below much of the 2010s, when inflation habitually undershot the BoE's target. Subtract from this about 2pc annual GDP growth and you will see inflation sits around 2pc, Bailey's target.
Fretting wage growth and April's tax rise? Don't. Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman proved long ago wage growth follows inflation. It heals the wounds, it doesn't cause them.
Market forecasting requires seeing something big that others don't. Energy spent fighting a previous war astride an army of 'experts' doesn't even attempt that.
The inflation war has ended. Be patient. The truth is the FTSE has told you this for months as it kept hitting new highs. Trust it.