Friday, October 23, 2009

The forecasters must be crazy

At yesterday's CBT bimonthly expectations survey, October inflation expectations came out at 1.20% mom. I just did a couple of quick calculations myself, and I am getting a forecast of slightly over 2% mom. Funnily, the effect of the end of the price cuts (some of which will spill over to November) and the electricity price hikes by themselves contribute almost 1% to inflation, so expectations are way off the target. You can see CBT President Yilmaz's warning yesterday at Eskisehir that October inflation could be high as a shot at steering expectations in the right direction, and I suspect that the CNBC-E survey, which is asked solely to bank economists, will be much more rational.

Yearly inflation will most likely shoot below 5%, as October inflation has come in at a sultry 2.6% mom last year. Then, we'll probably see inflation shoot up rapidly in the final months of the year, as there are no more base effects, ending the year at just below 6% (and shattering my otherwise immaculate number of the beast forecasts- but don't worry, I'll have my revenge next year).

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