It’s remarkable that a protective wall has come to be synonymous with an open global financial centre where people from all over the world meet and do business together. Despite its name, Wall Street has never benefited from walls. Quite the opposite, in fact: it has profited from tearing down walls, from eliminating tax barricades and trade barriers.
However, inflation is distilled from many prices, and those prices do not move uniformly. As a result, we may be led to “falsely” dismiss certain price movements and risk being misled as to the true inflation rate. Let me use a simple example to illustrate this point.