Thanks to the Labor Department, we got a read Tuesday on the state of the U.S. Economy. The latest Consumer Price Index indicates inflation is up.

Federal Reserve policymakers, who are meeting in Washington Tuesday and Wednesday, will pay close attention to that report, although they view it through a different lens than the rest of us.

The Fed wants to get ahead of inflation, because when the Fed changes its policies, that doesn’t have an immediate effect.  “It’s a long and variable lag process,” says Kevin T. Jacques, a professor of finance at Baldwin Wallace University. “It just takes a lot of time.”