Forget the adage about measuring twice and cutting once. Aside from the Bank of Japan, major central banks are in a hurry to tighten financial conditions even as a cyclical slowdown weakens demand. The Federal Reserve's decision to hike by 75 bp instead of the 50 bp that it had previously guided investors and businesses to expect was primarily due to a CPI report. The Fed targets another inflation measure, the PCE deflator, which ran two percentage points lower than the CPI in April. Fed Chair Powell cited the increase in consumer inflation expectations picked up in the preliminary results of the University of ... (full story)