War on Hamas Spells Trouble for War on Inflation: Niall Ferguson

I am not sure Oct. 12, 2023, was the day I’d have chosen to declare victory. Just five days after Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad launched their barbaric rampage from Gaza, the Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman tweeted, “The war on inflation is over. We won, at very little cost.”

I leave aside that the measure he selected to prove his point — consumer price inflation excluding food, energy, shelter and used cars — was not one in common use, for the obvious reason that a measure of inflation that omits the cost of eating, heating, housing and driving ...