Sarah Palin is lashing out at Wall Street Journal reporter Sudeep Reddy, after Reddy critiqued his News Corp. colleague for overstating the effects of inflation while weighing in on Fed policy.

The donnybrook began after National Review Online leaked part of Palin's Fed critique, in which the Fox News contributor and possible GOP presidential candidate criticized the Fed's decision to purchase long-term bonds from the Treasury Department. According to Palin, this expansionary monetary policy will further drive up the cost of food, which she claims has “risen significantly” in the past year:

All this pump priming will come at a serious price. And I mean that literally: everyone who ever goes out shopping for groceries knows that prices have risen significantly over the past year or so. Pump priming would push them even higher.

After those comments were made public, Reddy contradicted Palin, pointing out that food prices have, in fact, been relatively stable for the past year:

Grocery prices haven't risen all that significantly, in fact. The consumer price index's measure of food and beverages for the first nine months of this year showed average annual inflation of less than 0.6%, the slowest pace on record (since the Labor Department started keeping this measure in 1968). Even if you pick a single snapshot -- say, September's year-over-year increase in prices -- that was just 1.4%, far better than the 6% annual increase for food prices recorded in September 2008.

The overall consumer price index was up 1.1% in September from a year earlier. Apart from September 2009 (when prices were down 1.3%), that was the slowest annual inflation rate for September since the early 1960s. That's not strong evidence to argue about rising prices today.

Palin quickly took Reddy to task over Facebook, citing a November 4 Journal article that she claimed supported her position that food prices have “risen significantly over the past year or so.” She concluded, “Now I realize I'm just a former governor and current housewife from Alaska, but even humble folks like me can read the newspaper.”

But the very article Palin cited fully supports Reddy's point -- that food prices for the past year have been relatively stable:

Food prices are rising faster than overall inflation. The consumer price index for all items minus food and energy rose 0.8% over the year to September, the lowest 12-month increase since March 1961, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said. The food index rose 1.4%, however. The U.S. Agricultural Department is predicting overall food inflation of about 2% to 3% next year.

The current pressure is nothing like it was in October 2008, when food prices were rising at an annual rate of 6.3% and some hard lessons were learned when producers passed along those costs: Shoppers switched to private-label products.

Reddy is not backing down. See his Twitter response after the jump.

Ryan Chittum, in a Columbia Journalism Review blog post, offers a possible settlement to the brouhaha: “How about to make it up to Reddy, Palin lets a real reporter like him fly out to Wasilla to interview her for once instead of going to her house folks at Fox News?”