5 In general, price changes measured over a few months tend to be noisy, even when measured on a core or trimmed-mean basis. For this reason, the FOMC usually focuses on the growth rate of PCE prices over the previous 12 months, which smooths through the volatility in the monthly price data.
Conclusion  Ladies and gentlemen, let me conclude. The idea of monetary policy safeguarding stability on multiple fronts is alluring. But by giving in to that allure, we would likely end up in a world even less stable than before. This holds true especially for the euro area, where a Eurosystem acting as a lender-of-last-resort role for governments would upend the delicate institutional balance.