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Finance & economics
财经板块
Consumer prices: Pervasive problems
消费者价格指数：普遍问题
Inflation in America is becoming more broad-based
美国的通货膨胀正变得更为广泛
Unhappy economies are often unhappy in their own ways.
不幸的经济各有各的烦恼。
Today most, however, are battling a common foe: a surge in consumer-price inflation.
不过，眼下多数经济都面临着一个共同的敌人：消费者价格的飙升。
According to figures released on April 12th, consumer prices rose by 8.5% in March in America, compared with a year earlier—the fastest pace since 1981.
根据4月12日公布的数据，美国3月份的消费者价格同比上涨了8.5%，是自1981年以来的最快增速。
In Britain and the euro area consumer prices rose by 7% and 7.5%, respectively, in the year to March.
截至今年3月，英国和欧元区的消费者价格分别上涨了7%和7.5%。
Across most rich and emerging economies, inflation is now well above central banks’ targets.
在大多数富裕国家和新兴经济体中，通货膨胀率已经远远高于央行的目标。
In summer 2020, after a period of too-low inflation, America’s Federal Reserve said that it would tolerate inflation that was a little above its 2% target for a time, in the hope of making up for undershoots.
2020年夏天，在经历了一段过低的通胀率之后，美联储表示，它可以容忍通胀率暂时略高于2%的目标，希望能以此弥补低于2%的通胀率。
In the subsequent 20 months, consumer prices have blown past where they would have been had the Fed achieved its 2% target on average, putting pressure on the central bank to raise interest rates fast.
在接下来的20个月里，消费者价格已经超过了美联储平均实现2%的通胀目标时应该达到的水平，这给美联储带来了快速加息的压力。
In many places a big chunk of current headline inflation reflects rises in energy prices, which soared after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine jolted commodity markets.
在许多地方，当前整体通胀的很大一部分反映了能源价格的上涨，在俄罗斯入侵乌克兰冲击大宗商品市场后，能源价格飙升。
In March these explained about half of the euro area’s annual inflation rate.
3月份，这些因素占据了欧元区年通胀率上涨的一半成因。
In America, however, the pressure is broad-based.
然而，在美国，压力来自多个方面。
“Core” consumer prices, which strip out food and energy prices, rose at an annual rate of 6.5% in March.
剔除食品和能源价格之后，“核心”消费者价格在3月份以6.5%的年增长率增长。
Core inflation is one way to assess the breadth of price surges.
核心通胀率是评估价格飙升幅度的一种方法。
Another is to exclude the items for which prices have swung the most, typically owing to idiosyncratic factors.
另一种方法是排除通常由特殊原因造成的价格波动最大的项目。
The Dallas Fed, for instance, constructs a “trimmed mean” measure, which sorts the components of the personal-consumption expenditures index (the Fed’s preferred gauge of prices) by their inflation rates, and drops the bottom 24% and the top 31%.
例如，达拉斯联邦储备银行构建了一个“削减平均值”的衡量标准，将个人消费支出指数(美联储首选的价格衡量指标)的组成部分按通胀率排序，并将最底层的24%和最高的31%降低。
On that measure inflation has risen by 3.6%—still above the central bank’s target, but by much less.
按照这一标准，通货膨胀率上升了3.6%——仍然高于中央银行的目标，但升幅要小得多。
The problem with trimmed means, however, is that they involve abrupt cliffs, lopping off the top and bottom of the index while giving adjacent percentiles their full weight.
然而，经过调整的数据有个问题，它们包括一些断崖，砍掉了指数的顶部和底部，同时给邻近的百分比以全部权重。
In November The Economist devised an alternative index, which applies smooth weights.
11月，《经济学人》设计了一种采用平滑权重的替代指数。
Components with inflation near the median get the most emphasis, and those with the most dramatic price changes get the least.
通货膨胀率接近中位数的成分最受重视，而那些价格变化最剧烈的成分最不受重视。
Our measure suggests an inflation rate of close to 6%—hot enough to keep Jerome Powell, the Fed’s chairman, sweating at night.
我们的测量表明通胀率接近6%——这个增幅足以让美联储主席杰罗姆·鲍威尔大晚上的直冒冷汗。
