The president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas has cautioned against ignoring the inflation represented by rising food and energy prices, revealing a continuing debate inside the US central bank over how best to evaluate price pressures.

Richard Fisher on Thursday said the increases in food and energy prices over recent years could represent “longer-lived trends rather than transitory blips”. If this was the case “the arguments made for excluding food and energy prices” from core inflation, the Fed’s traditionally preferred measure, “would be on shaky ground”.