Barclays analyst Tim Bond: We note in passing that the most recent US CPI reading offers a
very misleading picture of consumer inflation trends. The vagaries of seasonal adjustment produced a fall
in gasoline prices in a month during which actual gasoline pump prices rose 10%. Bizarrely, the 3 month
annualised rate of actual gasoline inflation to the end of April is 66%, whilst the 3 month annualised rate
of gasoline inflation reported in the seasonally adjusted CPI index is minus 10.4% (non-seasonally-
adjusted gasoline CPI is up 60% on a 3 month annualised basis). All of which tends to suggests that the
BLS’ seasonal adjustment process might be a fruitful line of research for string theory physicists looking
for evidence of parallel universes.