I sent this to the good folks at Marketplace:
In David Frum’s essay yesterday about Federal reserve policy, he stated that he remembered, “the little white stickers my family’s favorite steak house used to overwrite last month’s price”.
I would make two points here.
First, Mr. Frum is born and bred in Canada, specifically Toronto, Ontario, and it appears that the nearest American soil, Niagara Falls, New York, was about 80 miles away.
Given the number of steak houses available in Toronto, it is likely that the menu of which he spoke was for a Canadian restaurant, and using a Canadian restaurant to describe US inflation is not the basis for an honest discussion of any policy.
Second, this was in the days when plain paper copiers were a rare beast, so reprinting a menu was a significant issue, even if it was done only once a year.