James Gibney, Columnist

We’re Haunted by the Ghost of Inflation Past

Putting the current bout of price increases in historical context can be hard.

December 14, 2021 at 9:58 PM UTC

James Gibney is an editor for Bloomberg Opinion. Previously an editor at the Atlantic, the New York Times, Smithsonian, Foreign Policy and the New Republic, he was also in the U.S. Foreign Service from 1989 to 1997 in India, Japan and Washington.

George Harrison and former President Gerald Ford, not fighting inflation.
Photographer: David Hume Kennerly/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

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The latest drumbeat of inflation news brings word of a “record” annual increase of almost 10% in prices paid to U.S. producers last month. Sounds alarming, and maybe it is — but read on and you see this record dates back only to 2010. As much as every policymaker wants to avoid the mistakes of the past, putting the current bout of inflation in historical context can be hard. Or as the ex-Lloyd’s-banker-turned-poet T.S. Eliot once scribbled,