The December 2011 Consumer Price Index for Urban Consumers (CPI-U) released today puts the November year-over-year inflation rate at 3.39%, which is below the 3.96% average since the end of World War II. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has compiled CPI data since 1913, and numbers are conveniently available from the FRED repository (here). My long-term inflation charts reach back to 1872 by adding Warren and Pearson's price index for the earlier years. The spliced series is available at Yale Professor Robert Shiller's website. This look further back into the past dramatically illustrates the extreme oscillation ... (full story)