So what's the idea here? That oligopolistic/regulated prices have inertia and free competition prices don't, and the "real inflation" is in the free competition prices?

No, the real inflation is whatever the inflation is.

The point is that fixed prices tell you something about what the price-fixers think the future inflation will be. And prices being what they are, that can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Pure flexible prices, OTOH, don't price in expectations. So if you want a handle on what people believe the future inflation will be, you will have to compare the inflation in the fixprice and flexprice sectors of the economy. In other words, "core inflation" is pretty uninteresting on its own - the interesting figures are total inflation and the difference between inflation in fixprice and flexprice sectors, because it is that difference which tells you whether the fixprice sector expects higher or lower inflation in the future.

Second of all, I have recently developed this intuition that the more volatile prices and volumes are, the more inflation there is

That's an interesting intuition, and it may very well be correct. In that case, figuring out the relevant expectations would get a bit more complicated...

So, what are we doing? We're excluding the capital-intensive sectors of the economy from the price index, and we're introducing an upwards bias in the inflation estimate.

Actually, no. "Core" inflation is an attempt to exclude the flexprice sector, giving a downward bias.

And the more likely explanation for the FOMC having a problem with the whole "making accurate predictions" thing is that they assume long-run money neutrality. Forecasters who actually have to make more-or-less reliable forecasts can't afford rigid adherence to such ideological drivel, and will have to (tacitly) cast it by the wayside... (That's the kind version. The unkind version is that the FOMC is a group of hacks who fit the analysis to a pre-ordained conclusion.)

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.