Liberal politicians and economists don’t seem to recognize the everyday harms of rising costs.

by Michael Powell
The Atlantic

Democratic Party analysts and left-leaning economists have had quite enough of their fellow Americans’ complaints. As a striking number of poll respondents express alarm, despair even, about the rising cost of living during Joe Biden’s presidency, experts shake their heads. Don’t people realize that jobs are plentiful, wages are rising, and inflation is in retreat?

Few have struck this chord more insistently than Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize–winning economist and liberal New York Times columnist. In a February column titled “Vibes, Vegetables and Vitriol,” he suggested that inflation is no longer worrisome and backed up his view with field research.

Continue Reading at TheAtlantic.com…

from WallStForMainSt

The fight to reduce inflation has struck a rough patch in recent months.

by Max Zahn
ABC News

Consumer prices rose 3.5% in March compared to a year ago, accelerating markedly from the previous month and reversing some of the progress achieved in a two-year fight to cool inflation, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data showed. The finding matched economists’ expectations.

Price increases have cooled dramatically from a peak of about 9%, but inflation still stands more than a percentage point higher than the Federal Reserve’s target rate of 2%.

A spike in housing and gasoline prices at the outset of this year has helped prolong the nation’s bout of elevated inflation. Meanwhile, economic performance has been robust, boosting consumer demand and putting upward pressure on prices.

The latest finding indicated an uptick from the 3.2% annual inflation rate recorded in February.

Continue Reading at ABCNews.Go.com…

from Kerry Lutz's Financial Survival Network

by John Carney
Breitbart.com

Claim: President Joe Biden claimed on Wednesday that inflation was “skyrocketing” when he took office.

“Look we have dramatically reduced inflation from 9% down to close to 3% we’re in a situation where we’re better situated and we were we took office, where we inflation was skyrocketing,” Biden said Wednesday at a White House press conference.

The president was reacting to the latest report on the consumer price index, which showed inflation rose at an annualized rate of 4.6 percent in March, the fourth consecutive month in which inflation has exceeded expectations.

Verdict: False.

Continue Reading at Breitbart.com…

Dive into the world of economic truths with us on this week’s Finance University, as Paul and I unravel the deeper impact of inflation beyond the government’s portrayal.

by Dr. Chris Martenson
Chris Martenson’s Peak Prosperity

Welcome to this week’s Finance University episode.

This week, we’re tackling a hot-button issue: inflation. With government figures often underplaying the real impact of inflation on everyday lives, it’s essential to peel back the layers and understand the true picture. We’ll be joined as usual by Paul Kiker from Kiker Wealth Management, bringing his expertise to our lively conversation. Whether you’re grappling with rising costs or curious about how inflation shapes our economy, this episode is a must-watch. So, set a reminder, tune in, and let’s explore these critical financial issues together.

Continue Reading at PeakProsperity.com…

from Zero Hedge

Tens of millions of Americans are having trouble paying their power bills as residential electricity inflation continues to run rampant. The latest data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (February’s print) shows that three out of every four major cities in the US had power prices rise for residential customers.

“Food has been a worry, but now electricity is the worry,” 75yo Alfredo De Avila told Bloomberg, adding, “Unless you want to go to candles and firewood, we have no other choice but to bite the bullet and pay.”

For the Oakland, California, resident, already battered by high taxes, food inflation, elevated fuel pump prices, and out-of-control violent crime, the latest price increase from the state’s largest electricity utlity, PG&E Corp, of a 13% jump in power bills in January, plus more expected rises this year, could put the retiree under more financial pressure.

Continue Reading at ZeroHedge.com…

from ITM TRADING, INC.

Markets are buzzing about an even more specific prices gauge contained within the data — the so-called supercore inflation reading.

by Brian Evans
CNBC.com

A hotter-than-expected consumer price index report rattled Wall Street Wednesday, but markets are buzzing about an even more specific prices gauge contained within the data — the so-called supercore inflation reading.

Along with the overall inflation measure, economists also look at the core CPI, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, to find the true trend. The supercore gauge, which also excludes shelter and rent costs from its services reading, takes it even a step further. Fed officials say it is useful in the current climate as they see elevated housing inflation as a temporary problem and not as good a measure of underlying prices.

Supercore accelerated to a 4.8% pace year over year in March, the highest in 11 months.

Continue Reading at CNBC.com…

from The Hill

by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street

Including by 7.9% annualized for the not-seasonally adjusted PPI, worst since June 2022. So we’ll take a look.

The Producer Price Index data got a lot of attention today because it didn’t increase as sharply as a month ago, and so that was seen as a relief on the inflation front.

The thing is these figures are very volatile from month to month, as the blue lines in the charts below show, and the smaller increases in March on top of the spikes in February weren’t nearly small enough, and all the three-month rates – the month-to-month increases in January, February, and March combined – that iron out some of the month-to-month volatility, jumped.

Continue Reading at WolfStreet.com…

from Breaking Points

by Denitsa Tsekova and Lu Wang
Yahoo! Finance

(Bloomberg) — Signs that inflation has yet to release its grip on markets have simmered for weeks. Now they’re boiling over after Wednesday’s hotter-than-forecast consumer price index sent stocks and bonds reeling.

With gold, oil and cryptocurrency rallying of late amid fresh demand for inflation hedges, the March CPI report unleashed a rout across Wall Street. Yields on 10-year Treasuries topped 4.5% for the first time since November while the S&P 500 closed around 1% lower. Energy companies were the best-performing names, a reminder of the post-pandemic playbook when inflation trading was ascendant. Brent crude climbed back above $90 as geopolitical tensions heightened.

With the commodity rally stoking broader cost pressures, a cohort of traders is starting to doubt that Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell will be able to engineer a soft economic landing, whereby the business cycle expands at a healthy clip just as inflation eases.

Continue Reading at Finance.Yahoo.com…

from David Lin

by John Carney
Breitbart.com

Prices charged by U.S. producers of goods and services rose by 2.1 percent over the twelve months through March, an increase over the 1.6 percent annual inflation recorded in the previous month.

Despite the increase in the year-over-year inflation, rate, there was some good news in the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ producer price index (PPI) for final demand. The monthly increase slowed to 0.2 percent in March from 0.6 percent in February.

Economists had forecast worse. The year-over-year figure was seen as rising to 2.3 percent and the forecast for the monthly figure was for a 0.3 percent increase.

Core PPI, which excluded food and energy prices, rose 0.2 percent, matching the consensus forecast and down from February’s 0.3 percent rise. The annual increase came in at 2.4 percent, just ahead of the expectation for a 2.3 percent rise.

Continue Reading at Breitbart.com…

from Yahoo Finance

from Zero Hedge

Coming into today’s CPI number, which followed three previous red-hot inflation prints, we said that it’s time for a “miss” (the first of 2024) not because the data demands it – on the contrary, prices continue to rise at a frightening pace – but because a dovish CPI print today would be the last opportunity for the Fed to set a timetable for a rate cut calendar ahead of November’s election.

Well, you can wave goodbye to all that, because we just got the 4th consecutive “inflation beat” in a row…

[…] … with supercore inflation coming in blazing hot…

… thanks to a boiling inflation print which saw every single CPI metric coming in hotter than expected – was a shock, not because it reflected reality, but because it effectively sealed Biden’s fate because as Bloomberg’s Chris Antsey writes, “obviously, this is very bad news for Joe Biden… we’re approaching the point where high inflation is bound to still be in voters’ minds when they head to the polls, regardless of how the price figures come in over summer.”

Continue Reading at ZeroHedge.com…

by Peter Schiff
Schiff Sovereign

[Note from James: The first thing I did this morning when I saw the US government’s latest inflation numbers was to call my friend and partner Peter Schiff to enjoy a good rant about how the Fed has completely lost the war with inflation. Peter’s thoughts are below, and I agree entirely.]

Bill Martin had a pretty serious problem in 1969.

As the Chairman of the Federal Reserve (back when people had the audacity to say “chairman” instead of “chair”, as if we are pieces of furniture), Martin was one of the few people who could say that he had central banking in his blood.

His father, William McChesney Martin Sr., was actually one of the original architects of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, and then later served on its Board of Governors and as President of the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank.

Continue Reading at SchiffSovereign.com…

Consumer prices rose 0.4 percent in March and the annual inflation rate ticked up to 3.5 percent, the highest rate seen since September.

by Eric Boehm
Reason.com

At the start of the year, it looked like America’s fight with inflation was finally coming to an end.

Not so fast.

Consumer prices rose 0.4 percent in March and the annual inflation rate ticked up to 3.5 percent, according to data released Wednesday morning by the Department of Labor. So-called “core inflation,” which filters out the more volatile categories like food and energy prices, also jumped 0.4 percent in the past month and has climbed by 3.8 percent since a year ago. Both figures rang in higher than expected.

Inflation remains well below the shockingly high levels reached in 2022—when it peaked above 9 percent—but the past two months have been a worrying reversal. March’s annual inflation figure of 3.5 percent is the highest mark since September.

Continue Reading at Reason.com…

by Ryan McMaken
Mises.org

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest price inflation data, CPI inflation in March rose to a seven-month high, and price inflation hasn’t proven nearly as transitory as the regime’s economists have long predicted.

According to the BLS, Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation rose 3.5 percent year over year during March, without seasonal adjustment. That’s the thirty-seventh month in a row of inflation well above the Fed’s arbitrary 2 percent inflation target.

Month-over-month inflation was flat with the CPI rising by 0.4 percent from February to March, with seasonal adjustment. Month-to-month growth had also been 0.4 percent from January to February.

Continue Reading at Mises.org…