Ok, I’ve swiftly breezed through the report ( the relevant 90 odd pages) and there’s nothing really of note except that they are looking into potential bias to the HICP figures from the different weightings, for example, what components have changed because of consumer shifts. While on the face of it it may sound like they want to move the goalposts it’s actually to see if bias actually hides negative inflation. After a bit of blurb they conclude that it’s not actually possible to estimate measurement bias in HICP. It’s probably something that we don’t need to look into that deeply but may be something to bear in mind if they start waffling on about it. Should you wish to have a look yourself it starts from page 41.
The other comment I noted was that wage growth is still very weak and showing no signs of a turnaround. With high unemployment that’s going to keep that side of the inflation scale very low.
ECB labour costs 10 04 2014