> The real struggle is the government - fed, treasury, etc all claimed the inflation was “transitory”. A lot of people have been caught off guard. Aka people expected a deflation.

The prediction that inflation spike was transitory (which was universally abandoned anyway) was not a prediction of a rapid return to past prices, but of a rapid return without significant policy intervention to normal rates of inflation.

> At least locally, it’s higher based on my tracking.

Local inflation tends to differ from the national average one way or the other, and I doubt your tracking is anywhere close tonas comprehensive and systematic as any of the major federal government inflation measures.

OTOH, the PCE—which is what the Fed uses to guide police decisions—during the spike has jumped higher than the CPI and came down slower, so “the CPI has understated recent inflation” is part of the premise of recent monetary policy.

> fed, treasury, etc all claimed the inflation was “transitory”

That is precisely what "Core measure rose 0.3% in December" means. The period of high inflation is (apparently) over. The price increases that inflation generated will tend to stick around.

Inflation went up and then fell back down. It did involve more fed intervention than had been predicted! But it did come down.

That seems to qualify as "transitory" inflation to me, as opposed to persistent inflation that doesn't abate.