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CORE INFLATION….Why does the Fed rely on a “core” inflation rate — one that excludes food and energy costs — when it sets monetary policy? Are they trying to pretend that food and energy, items that are more important to the middle class than to the rich, don’t matter? Mark Thoma explains:

If the question is “what is today’s inflation rate,” the total inflation rate is the best measure. It’s intended to measure the cost of living and there’s no reason at all to strip anything out. It’s only when we ask different questions that different measures are used.

Core inflation, it turns out, (a) does a better job of forecasting future inflation, (b) does a better job of estimating whether inflation is currently rising or falling, and (c) is the inflation target that best stabilizes the economy.

The core inflation rate you see in the news, the one that strips out food and energy, should be though of as a short-hand, quick measure of all three of these concepts. But in each case the Fed uses measures (formally or informally) designed to best satisfy these three functions. For example, when it forecasts future inflation, it uses a different concept of core inflation than it uses in setting policy.

In other words: no, the Fed isn’t trying to pretend that food and energy inflation aren’t important. They focus on core inflation because it’s a better input to the technical models they use to guide monetary policy. Read the whole thing for the full explanation.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

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Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

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