Inflation Wave ‘Broken’: Nobel laureate Paul Krugman said in a New York Times op-ed that “while there was a wave of inflation, it seems to have broken.” The downtrend is more evident if inflation is measured in the same way as it is elsewhere, the economist said. He was referring to the harmonized index of consumer prices, which does not include the owners’ equivalent rent – an “imputed cost of housing that nobody actually pays and is a lagging indicator.”