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Acting Labor Secretary: Wages Haven’t Kept Up with Inflation Under Biden, Ignoring Warnings About Overstimulus ‘Paid Off’

by Ian Hanchett
Breitbart.com

During an interview with CBS’s “The Takeout” podcast that took place before the release of the February inflation numbers that showed a drop in real wages from January to February, acting Labor Secretary Julie Su acknowledged that wages have not kept up with inflation since President Joe Biden’s first full month in office back in February 2021. And that President Joe Biden’s response to those who said, “you can’t put too much money out into people’s pockets, that’s going to be a bad thing,” “was, no, I’d rather go too big than too small here. And that has paid off beautifully, in terms of the recovery.” And that Biden responded to those who thought the spending in the American Rescue Plan was too much by taking the approach that “there’s no such thing as too much” “good for the American worker.”

Continue Reading at Breitbart.com…

Up for Inflation, Down for Stocks and Bond Values

by David Haggith
GoldSeek

Who would have thought, in an investing world where the techiest people who built the high tech that both ran and drove the stock market explosively, that it would be laid-off tech employees who express a “sense of impending doom” over job cuts? The answer to that would be anyone who lived through the dot-com bust at an age that was paying attention. And that’s where we are today, according to a story about the sad faces of techies, who face the highest layoffs since 2001.

As they struggle to find new positions, they are also being pressed to accept pay cuts. It’s that dismal for those in the big-money realm.

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Stock Market Today: Wall Street Slips Further Away From Records Amid Inflation Worries

BEIJING — Stocks fell in early trading and moved further away from a record high set earlier this week. The S&P 500 fell 0.5% Friday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 53 points, or 0.1%, and the Nasdaq slipped 0.7%.

by Damian J. Troise, The Associated Press
Times-Colonist

BEIJING — Stocks fell in early trading and moved further away from a record high set earlier this week. The S&P 500 fell 0.5% Friday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 53 points, or 0.1%, and the Nasdaq slipped 0.7%. Treasury yields edged higher in the bond market. Adobe slumped after giving investors a weak revenue forecast. Investors are closing out a week of heavy economic reports that showed inflation, though broadly cooling, remains hotter than expected. The reports have raised concerns about the Federal Reserve’s next move on interest rates, though Wall Street still sees potential for a cut in June.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

Wall Street posted small gains in early trading Friday as markets try to close out another up-and-down week on the positive side.

Continue Reading at TimesColonist.com…

Jerome Powell Just Revealed a Hidden Reason Why Inflation is Staying High: The Economy is Increasingly Uninsurable

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…

White House: We’re Still Making Inflation Progress, Last Two Months Had ‘Seasonality’

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.

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The Federal Budget Deficit Was Back to “Normal” (Massive) in February

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.

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Janet Yellen Warns Inflation Decline Might Not Be ‘Smooth’

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…

What the PPI is Telling Us: Disinflation in “Core Goods,” a Hefty Counterweight to Hot Services Inflation, May Be Over

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…

Spring Breakers Slam Bidenflation: ‘I Paid $8 for Big Mac Meal Weeks Ago – Now I’m Paying $12!’

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…

Another Inflation Wave is Underway

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…

Higher Forever? Even Yellen Starts to Get It: Higher Inflation & Higher Yields Are Here to Stay

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…

Rate Cuts? CPI Says ‘Nope!’

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…

Price Inflation is Sticky and That’s a Problem

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…