Fed's Lockhart: Inflation tame despite oil prices (by Greg Robb)

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Inflation is currently running below the 2% rate that defines price-stability, despite the recent pickup in oil prices, said Dennis Lockhart, the president of the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank on Tuesday. Lockhart said he expects inflation to rise only gradually and return to the 2% range in 2013. Lockhart said that the Fed and investors worried about inflation were not on different planets. He said the Fed's job was to search for underlying inflation trends and was not to prevent relative price adjustments dictated by market forces. "For the moment, inflation, properly defined, is tame, in my view," he said. "And the rise of individual prices does not signal incipient inflation," he added.