TWO PERCENT WAS THE PROMISE — EVERY CPI READING SINCE MARCH 2021 HAS BROKEN IT — OCTOBER 2025 IS A DASH

A target is a promise. The Fed’s promise, in its own words, is “inflation of 2 percent over the longer run,” and the government keeps the scorecard. The Bureau of Labor Statistics said on September 11, 2026 that the CPI-U all items index rose 3.4 percent over the 12 months to August 2026, not seasonally adjusted. Run the same 12-month math on every month of the BLS index and the last reading at or under 2 percent was February 2021, at 1.7 percent. March 2021 came in at 2.6 percent, and no reading since has dipped below 2.3. That is 65 readings above target across 66 calendar months. Why not 66 readings? Because October 2025 is a dash in the table. BLS did not collect prices during the shutdown and never published that month, so the record of the broken promise has a hole in it. The honest caveat: the Fed measures its goal on the PCE price index, not CPI. That does not help the Fed. The BEA’s July 2026 release put PCE at 3.7 percent over the year, and the PCE series has been above 2 percent for 65 straight months since March 2021, with no gap. Two rulers, one answer. Five years and five months. The promise was 2 percent, and the government’s own paper says it has not been kept once in that time. At the time of this writing, bitcoin was $76,540.