One word, three syllables, our entire economic focus right now.

Any guesses?

From American public media.

This is Marketplace.

In Los Angeles, I'm Kai.

Rizdole, it is Wednesday today,

the 13th of September.

It is always to have you along.

Everybody, we have talked before about leading and lagging indicators, right?

Data about what happened in this economy,

versus data that tells you what might be around the corner.

Inflation is kind of a classic lagger.

What the rate of price increases has been the past month or year or time span of your choosing.

I go there at the top of the show today,

because as you have no doubt seen or heard in your regular news routine today,

the August consumer price index came out this morning.

Headline, inflation, 3.7% from a year ago,

is stripped out food and energy to get to what is called core inflation,

even though we all use food and energy.

That is at 4.3% gas, mostly.

But again, that's what has already happened.

Wouldn't it be handy to have a sense of where we're going?

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