Today's inflation report contains mostly good news. Consumer prices went up only 0.2 percent from May to June, according to the government. But that's a weighted index, of course. Prices for some items rose faster than 0.2 percent. One of the biggest pops came in "lodging away from home," ie., hotel and motel rates. Room prices rose 2.5 percent in one month. That's an annual rate of 34 percent! Of course hotel rates won't go up that much. But they're rising much faster than inflation, which helps explain why hotel stocks are doing so well and why my wife and I paid $400 for a night in New York last month.

Here is graph, courtesy of the Labor Department, showing year-over-year percentage increases in hotel/motel rates. The price of lodging away from home was up 6.8 percent last month compared with the level of June 2006.