AHEAD of yesterday’s release of the official price inflation data for August, a Department of Finance economic bulletin attempted to preemptively sugar-coat what policymakers had to have known was going to be bad news with this optimistic observation: “The inflationary momentum is easing as shown by the forecast deceleration in the month-on-month price change to 0.38 percent from 0.51 percent last month, even as the year-on-year change is projected to hit 5.9 percent.”