Monetary policy

The twenty-sixth entry is a descida do nível de preços, and the word worth stopping on is not descida but the small do behind it. Portuguese hangs every noun of change on de and never has to think about it again: a descida do nível de preços, a subida dos preços, uma subida de dois pontos. English divides that one preposition in two, and the division is not a matter of taste. Whatever changes takes « in »: a fall in prices, a rise in output, an increase in demand, a drop in the exchange rate. How much it changed takes « of »: a rise of two per cent, a fall of half a point. Both can stand in one phrase — a rise in prices of two per cent — and a reader knows at once which figure belongs where. « Of » in front of the thing itself is not ungrammatical, but it says something else entirely, because it announces a collapse: the fall of a government, the fall of a city. So the entry is a fall in the price level, and a fall of the price level would sound like the end of it.