Kai Risdahl

Here's Marketplace's Kristen Schwab.

Famously, around here at least, the Federal Reserve has a favorite measure of inflation, PCE, the Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index, which, as we learned last week, sits at 3.8 percent.

3.3 percent if you want to talk the core measure, but either way, well above the Fed's 2 percent target.

At his confirmation hearing in April, though, new chair Kevin Warsh had some thoughts about that.

The measures I prefer are looking at things that are called trimmed averages.

Trimmed averages, also called trimmed means.

Tiffany Wilding, she's a managing director and economist at PIMCO right there.

That core PCE I mentioned, and as you could probably repeat back to me, right, takes out food and energy because they are so volatile, they consistently muddy the inflation waters.

The trimmed mean is all about kicking out other temporary outliers.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas puts out probably the best known trimmed mean reading, which for April came in at 2.3 percent, a much more comfortable number for the Federal Reserve, as you might imagine.

What counts, though, as an outlier can be in the eye of the beholder.

Vikas Patel there, an analyst at Employee America.

Think about what we've heard from now former Chair Powell for years and years.

More data.

So just, you know, give it some time.

History, Mark Twain told us, might not repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme.

Health care is the topic du jour.

Medicaid in particular, some of the big cuts to which were part of the GOP's tax and spending law last summer.

They are starting to phase in right around now.

Nebraska has just become the first state to implement work requirements for low-income people who get government-subsidized health insurance.