David Rosenberg: The only inflation left to tame is being caused by the Bank of Canada itself

financialpost.com:

Of course, the inflation-phobes will never be silenced and are saying that inflation is being skewed down by gasoline, that the process is about to stop and that the depressed year-ago base effects will reverse course (true, but only for the next three months).

But let’s stick to the facts. The consumer price index (not seasonally adjusted) came in at +0.1 per cent month over month in June and the same economists fretting over the situation were calling for +0.3 per cent. The headline inflation rate was supposed to ease to +3.0 per cent but instead softened to +2.8 per cent (from +3.4 per cent in May) to stand at the lowest pace since March 2021. On a month-over-month seasonally-adjusted basis, the CPI came in at just +0.1 per cent as well and that followed 0.0 per cent in May for the weakest back-to-back pulse in three years.

For all the talk of how this is all just a gasoline story, the core CPI came in at +0.1 per cent for the second month in a row as well, and we haven’t seen something like this since February-March 2021, which was a full year before the Bank of Canada took on this John Crow-type of aggressive policy tightening cycle.

The core rate of inflation (excluding food and energy) has declined now for seven months in a row — from +5.4 per cent a year ago to +3.6 per cent today (was +3.8 per cent in May). The six-month trend is down to a +2.9 per cent annual rate, and over the three months to June, now at a mere +2.5 per cent. But the policy hawks will focus on the key Bank of Canada core measures, which came in a bit hotter at +0.3 per cent sequentially and is sitting too high for the central bank’s liking at +3.9 per cent year over year for the median and +3.7 per cent for the trimmed-mean metric. While both