Obviously not a scientific process — but then populist inflation expectations can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Those are the results from Google’s predictive search function. You can see the results for inflation outstrip those for deflation by a cool nine to one.
On Google Trends, the picture is a bit clearer. Inflation has always outranked deflation in terms of Google search frequency — though deflation nearly caught up with its opposite in the latter half of 2008. The spread between the two now looks like it might be about to widen again. . .
Too bad Google Trends doesn’t do moving averages.
(H/T The Big Picture for the idea).
Related links:
Financial figures through Google goggles – FT Alphaville
The wisdom of China’s online crowds – FT Alphaville
Inflationistas, Deflationistas and Goldilockeans – FT Alphaville