by Marco Quiroz-Gutierrez
Yahoo! Finance

Troublesomely high inflation rates may have an overlooked metric at their source: soaring insurance costs. But don’t take our word for it, just listen to Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.

Several types of insurance, including home and car insurance, have surged over the past few years, and it’s hurting the Fed’s effort to get interest rates down to its 2% target, Powell said in congressional testimony last week.

“Insurance of various different kinds—housing insurance, but also automobile insurance, and things like that—that’s been a significant source of inflation over the last few years,” he said.

On Tuesday, data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that its metric for auto insurance, which covers physical damage, liability, and miscellaneous insurance coverage for private passenger vehicles, increased 20.6% over the past year and climbed 0.9% in February compared to the month prior.

Continue Reading at Finance.Yahoo.com…

from Fox News

by Ian Hanchett
Breitbart.com

During an interview with Bloomberg on Thursday, White House National Economic Council Deputy Director Daniel Hornung stated that “our progress on inflation does continue,” but “we’ve expected some seasonality in January and February. We didn’t expect the progress to continue on a straight line.”

Hornung said, “I won’t comment on monetary policy and the Federal Reserve. I think what I can say, if you take a step back, our progress on inflation does continue, down from a peak of 9% to the 3% range. Always, I think, we’ve expected some seasonality in January and February. We didn’t expect the progress to continue on a straight line. But I think if you look at what we have from CPI and PPI and now looking ahead to core PCE for the month of February, expect some continued progress there on that core annual inflation number.

Continue Reading at Breitbart.com…

from CNBC Television

by Mike Maharrey
GoldSeek

Thanks to record tax receipts, the January budget deficit was “only” $21.93 billion in January.

In February, government receipts fell back to normal. Spending was normal too – normally high. As a result, the February budget deficit was back to normal – massive.

The Biden administration ran a $296.28 billion budget shortfall last month, according to the latest Monthly Treasury Statement. With that, the fiscal 2024 budget deficit is knocking on the door of $1 trillion ($828.14 billion) with more than half a year to go.

The U.S. Treasury took in $271.13 billion in February. That was a slight increase from $262.11 billion in government receipts a year ago.

Continue Reading at GoldSeek.com…

from Kerry Lutz's Financial Survival Network

Yellen discusses inflation, higher taxes in exclusive interview

by Megan Henney , Edward Lawrence
Fox Business

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Wednesday that inflation could face a bumpy return to normal after back-to-back reports showed that price pressures within the U.S. economy rebounded at the start of the year.

In a sit-down interview with FOX Business’ Edward Lawrence, Yellen pushed back against stagflation concerns and maintained that progress on inflation has not stalled.

“I wouldn’t expect this to be a smooth path month to month, but the trend is clearly favorable,” she said. “That said, President Biden’s top priority is addressing the issue of high costs that concerns so many Americans.”

Continue Reading at FoxBusiness.com…

by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street

And that’s very disconcerting.

The Producer Price Index (PPI) for final demand jumped by 6.9% annualized in February from January, on top of the 3.9% jump in the prior month. The three-month rate jumped to 3.3% annualized, the highest since September.

Part of this was driven by a renewed surge in energy cost. But the other part was driven not only by surging costs in services – we knew that – but now also by surging costs in core goods, and that’s very disconcerting.

Continue Reading at WolfStreet.com…

Gen. Z keenly aware everything costing more under Joe Biden.

by Infowars.com
Info Wars

Fox News hit the beaches of Fort Lauderdale this week to informally poll Gen. Z Spring Break revelers, asking what they think of Joe Biden’s disastrous economy and the upcoming election.

While most Zoomers were more concerned with partying, some gave interesting takes on the state of the world, with many commenting on the cost of goods increasing as inflation soars under Biden.

Check out a short clip below, where one reveler lamented the price of a Big Mac meal from McDonald’s rising by $4, an increase of 50%.

Continue Reading at InfoWars.com…

from King World News

Another inflation wave is underway, and the Fed will have to decide whether to cut rates into inflation.

Sentiment In A Stock Market Mania

March 14 (King World News) – Peter Boockvar: When highlighting stock market sentiment data strictly to take the temperature of the room and watching out for extremes, both bullish and bearish, from a contrarian standpoint, I’ve mentioned that a 40 point spread between the Bulls and Bears in the Investors Intelligence survey should be considered extreme. Well, yesterday’s survey revealed an uber extreme read as Bulls got above 60 at 60.9 while Bears fell to just 14.5 from 16 last week where you now need a telescope to find a Bear.

Continue Reading at KingWorldNews.com…

from Kerry Lutz's Financial Survival Network

by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street

“It seems unlikely that yields are going to go back to being as low as they were before the pandemic”: Yellen.

By now everyone sort of knows that inflation has been re-heating in a very disconcerting way for months, and that the inflation saga is far from over. There are all kinds of discussions about the future of inflation in the US, and it seems there is a rough common denominator forming: The future of inflation in the US is more inflation – more than there was before the pandemic, when the “core PCE price index,” the Fed’s favored measure, rarely went above the 2% line, and then only briefly and by a hair.

Continue Reading at WolfStreet.com…

from Peter Schiff

by Karl Denninger
Market-Ticker.org

And here’s the latest…

The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased 0.4 percent in February on a seasonally adjusted basis, after rising 0.3 percent in January, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 3.2 percent before seasonal adjustment.

The index for shelter rose in February, as did the index for gasoline. Combined, these two indexes contributed over sixty percent of the monthly increase in the index for all items. The energy index rose 2.3 percent over the month, as all of its component indexes increased. The food index was unchanged in February, as was the food at home index. The food away from home index rose 0.1 percent over the month.

The index for all items less food and energy rose 0.4 percent in February, as it did in January. Indexes which increased in February include shelter, airline fares, motor vehicle insurance, apparel, and recreation. The index for personal care and the index for household furnishings and operations were among those that decreased over the month.

If you recall last month I noted that a serious ramp in gasoline prices started just after the survey week so it was definitely going to show up in the numbers this month. It did.

Continue Reading at Market-Ticker.org…

by Mike Maharrey
GoldSeek

Price inflation is like the gum on the bottom of your shoe that you just can’t scrape off. Or maybe it’s like a movie theater floor after a big premiere.

It’s sticky.

And that’s a problem.

The CPI data for February wasn’t anything to panic about. But nobody is throwing a party either. That’s because, like that gum adhering to your tennis shoe, it just won’t go away.

And that should come as no surprise given the amount of money the Federal Reserve and the U.S. government have injected into the economy since 2008.

Continue Reading at GoldSeek.com…

by Christian K. Caruzo
Breitbart.com

The National Institute of Statistics and Census of Argentina (INDEC) announced on Tuesday that Argentina registered a 13.2 percent inflation rate in February, marking the second month in a row where inflation has slowed down as a result of President Javier Milei’s austerity policies.

Upon taking office in December, Milei applied a series of “shock therapy” measures to avoid a total economic collapse in Argentina after nearly two decades of socialist governments left the country teetering on the brink of hyperinflation. Milei began by undoing as many of the hundreds of socialist regulations as possible and has turned his attention towards the near-depleted foreign reserves and a convoluted currency control system.

Continue Reading at Breitbart.com…

by Alexander W. Salter
The American Institute for Economic Research

There’s been another bump in the disinflationary road. The Bureau of Labor Statistics announced the Consumer Price Index (CPI) increased 0.4 percent in February and 3.2 percent year-over-year, exceeding many economists’ predictions. That’s up slightly from January’s 0.3-percent monthly and 3.1-percent annualized increases.

Much of the increase is due to shelter and gasoline prices, which the BLS reports accounted for “over sixty percent of the monthly increase in the index for all items.” Shelter prices rose 0.4 percent last month. This is a major component of household budgets, which is why the BLS weights it at roughly 30 percent of the CPI. Gasoline gets about a 3.5 percent weight, but these prices rose 3.8 percent last month alone.

Continue Reading at AIER.org…

THREE YEARS after insisting inflation was transitory, Yellen finally admits she was wrong as inflation continues to persist.

by Jamie White
Info Wars

Biden Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen expressed regret for advancing the false talking point that inflation in the U.S. was “transitory.”

After first proclaiming in 2021 that inflation was a “transitory” phenomenon, Yellen finally admitted Wednesday on Fox Business that she was wrong about inflation as it continues to persist in America.

“I regret saying [inflation] was transitory,” Yellen said. “It has come down, but I think transitory means a few weeks to months to most people.”

Continue Reading at InfoWars.com…

from TODAY

Inflation came in hotter than expected and … stocks rose sharply? Yes, that’s right. Meanwhile, digging through the financial plumbing reveals that everything Susanne Trimbath said is openly admitted to on Nasdaq’s own website publications.

by Dr. Chris Martenson
Chris Martenson’s Peak Prosperity

Inflation came in hotter than expected and – guess what? – stocks screamed higher … which is the exact opposite of what “should” happen.

But we’ve long since given up on expecting what should happen to actually happen. Stocks have been screaming higher for months on the back of the Fed and US Treasury conspiring to make financial conditions as easy as they’ve been in years. Which runs counter to this whole idea that ‘the Fed is tightening’ that is 100% not true.

Here’s what you get during such periods of time:

My explanation for the extreme desperation on display by the Fed and US Treasury is that their interventions are having to be both larger and more frequent just to keep the whole thing stapled together. Their fear seems to be along the lines of “If we let this thing deflate even slightly, the whole mess might explode in our hands and on our watch.”

Continue Reading at PeakProsperity.com…