[expat_panama]

Inflation or prices increases abound.

We have significant inflation.

Right.  No hard numbers for general prices but plenty of feeeelings.  In the mean time the Fed's prime mandate is stable prices, and a rate hike on top of zilch measured general prices is (like the article says) is friggin' hard to explain.

[agere_contra]

The Fed don't care about stable prices. They pretend that price inflation is 2% and they pretend to target that. If they actually wanted price stability wouldn't they target 0% price-inflation?

Also: the Fed are not going to raise rates. They might put up a notional 20 bp rise just to pretend that everything is OK: however in reality they are preparing for the next round of QE. That's if they're not already carrying out QE using national surrogates like Belgium to buy USTs.

ShadowStats measures price inflation using the same methods that were used in 1980. They make the US inflation rate about 6 or 7% per year.

Modern hedonic systems of inflation-measurement that offset cost with increased notional value and that ignore expenditure on essentials (such as food and energy) are simply not meaningful.