The shelter inflation storm

The upward pressure that housing costs have put on inflation can now probably be safely ignored. If only there was nothing else to do but the rent.

The Labor Department said Thursday that consumer prices rose 0.4% in September from August, putting them 8.2% above their level a year earlier. Core prices, which exclude food and energy products to better follow the inflation trend, rose 0.6% over the month and 6.6% over the year. Both the headline and core measures were above economists’ estimates, dashing any remaining hope that Federal Reserve policymakers could raise rates by half a percentage point, rather than three-quarters, in their next meeting in November.