Good Morning. Alphabet took some friendly fire from ex-CEO Eric Schmidt yesterday, who said rampant work from home had cost the company its edge in artificial intelligence. We assume it was all the ping-pong tables and free lunches of the Schmidt era that made Googlers go soft in the first place. At Unhedged the only perk is emails from readers: [email protected] and [email protected].

CPI

It is a sign of how much progress we have made in quelling inflation that one can nitpick good inflation reports without feeling ungrateful. And yesterday’s CPI report, good as it was, could have been a teensy bit better. Unhedged likes looking at CPI in terms of the month-to-month change annualised, excluding food and energy. Measured that way July was right in line with May, but warmer than June: