Good inflation Jun 05,2021 - Last updated at Jun 05,2021 PRINCETON — In response to recent concerns about resurgent inflation, US policymakers deny that there is any threat and insist that expectations are “well anchored”. Any recent price spikes, they argue, will prove temporary, arising from one-off shortages that will be resolved when life returns to normal after the pandemic. Nonetheless, market participants and investors are increasingly obsessed with the issue and pundits are rancorously divided, with some denouncing those with whom they disagree as “cockroaches”. Such rhetoric suggests a need to step back and think about what is meant by inflation and its opposite, deflation. Not all inflations or deflations are alike. Price declines (deflation) driven by technical improvements can be good, as in the case of electrical motors or chemical dyes in the late nineteenth century, or of computers (and many other electronic consumer goods) over the past 50 years. These are not the sort of price changes that lead to Great Depression-style defaults and debt crises.