from BBC

Consumer prices in the US rose faster than expected last month, in a sign that the fight to slow inflation has stalled.

Prices rose 3.5% over the 12 months to March, up from 3.2% in February, the US Labor Department said.

Higher costs for fuel, housing, dining out and clothing drove the increase.

Analysts warned the lack of progress will force the US central bank to keep interest rates higher for longer.

Higher interest rates help stabilise prices by making it more expensive to borrow for business expansions and other spending. In theory, that in turn slows the economy, and eases the pressures pushing up prices.

Continue Reading at BBC.com, Former home of child rapist, Jimmy Savile…

from CNBC Television

by Nicole Goodkind
CNN

New York (CNN) — US stocks fell sharply Wednesday after inflation data for March came in higher than expected.

The blue-chip Dow closed 422 points, or 1.1% lower. The S&P 500 lost 1% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite fell by 0.8%.

US consumer prices picked up again last month, vaulting to a 3.5% increase for the 12 months ended in March, according to the latest Consumer Price Index data released Wednesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

That’s up considerably from February’s 3.2% rate and marks the highest annual gain in the past six months. And while gas and shelter costs contributed more than half of that monthly increase, prices rose in pretty much every major category last month, the BLS said.

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from CBS News

by Aimee Picchi
CBS News

Inflation remains the stickiest of problems for the U.S. economy, with the March consumer price index coming in hotter than expected — the third straight month that prices have accelerated. Gasoline prices and rent contributed over half the monthly increase, the government said on Wednesday.

Prices in March rose 3.5% on an annual basis, higher than the 3.4% expected by economists polled by financial data services company FactSet. It also represents a jump from February’s increase of 3.2% and January’s bump of 3.1% on a year-over-year basis.

The latest acceleration in prices complicates the picture for the Federal Reserve, which has been monitoring economic data to determine whether inflation is cool enough to allow it to cut interest rates.

Continue Reading at CSBNews.com…

from ClearValue Tax

from Zero Hedge

A little over a month ago, a scandal erupted among the (relatively small( group of economists who keep a close eye on the monthly inflation data reported by the Biden Department of Labor, when they learned that there is an even smaller, and much more exclusive group of economists called “super users” who get preferential treatment from the BLS, including wink-wink-nudge-nudge explanations of where the data may diverge from expectations. That was the case for the January CPI when as Bloomberg first reported, the BLS sent an email to a group of data “super users”, which “explained suggested a surge in a measure of rental inflation — which left analysts puzzled — was caused by an adjustment to how subcomponents of the index are weighted”:

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from Bloomberg Television

by Yasin Ebrahim
Investing.com

Investing.com — Now is the time to lean into commodities, particularly energy, to hedge the risk that a faster pace inflation may return, driven by economic growth that is running above trend, JPMorgan said.

“Stay overweight commodities as protection to inflation risks: We are not out of the woods yet on inflation,” analysts at JPMorgan said in a recent note.

Gold has been the standout performer in the commodity playground recently, but JPMorgan throws shade on the yellow metal, saying its recent melt-up leaves it vulnerable to a correction.

Energy is favored as there is a “high chance that oil prices surpass $100 over the coming months,” the analysts said.

“Within commodities we believe energy is better hedge than gold,” they added, adding adding that a mean reversion looks high at the moment [for gold].”

Continue Reading at Investing.com…

from CNBC Television

The consumer price index will be released Wednesday morning and is expected to register increases of 0.3% both for the all-items measure as well as core.

by Jeff Cox
CNBC.com

A closely watched Labor Department report due Wednesday is expected to show that not much progress is being made in the battle to bring down inflation.

If so, that would be bad news for consumers, market participants and Federal Reserve officials, who are hoping price increases slow enough so that they can start gradually cutting interest rates later this year.

The consumer price index, which measures costs for a wide-ranging basket of goods and services across the $27.4 trillion U.S. economy, is expected to register increases of 0.3% both for the all-items measure as well as the core yardstick that excludes volatile food and energy.

Continue Reading at CNBC.com…

from Stansberry Research

by David Haggith
GoldSeek

There is just too much to cover in today’s news to do it all, so I’m saving the fascinating stuff from this week’s odd convergence of solar/lunar/lunacy events for my weekend Deeper Dive, which I am thinking of calling “The Apoceclipse: We Survived!” (Of course, maybe by then we’ll know we didn’t, or those who sift through our remains 10,000 years from now when they land here will know we didn’t and will put this planet on their list of sites to see … like Pompei is on our lists.)

The whirlwind tour of the eclipsing of America will take too long to put together for a weekday editorial, so such jubilee, madness and mayhem will have to wait in line behind more mundane madness like the Federal Reserve where my unknown predictions are doing a lot better (so far) than the renowned ecliptic predictions of many Sunday-morning eschatologists. Still, the day is not over, and the New Madrid Fault waited four months after the solar eclipse of 1811 to shatter several times into a series of the nation’s largest earthquakes on record, clanging church bells from Tennessee to Tallahassee and up to Boston. So those predictions of an earthquake calamity related to today’s solar eclipse because it passed over New Madrid already have a hedge built into their timelines.

Continue Reading at GoldSeek.com…

from Yahoo Finance

by John Carney
Breitbart.com

Inflation Has Arisen from the Dead

There’s a specter haunting Wall Street. The specter of resurgent inflation.

The major inflation indexes have been rising, giving rise to a debate about whether this is a “bump” in the road back to the Fed’s two percent target or evidence that inflationary pressures have re-emerged despite a monetary policy the Fed claims is restrictive.

The rise in the consumer price index (CPI) accelerated in each month since November, culminating in the February figure that works out to 5.4 percent annualized. That was the highest since August of last year. The three-month average annualized figure came in at 4.0 percent, above the six-month figure of 3.2 percent, indicating a trend toward higher inflation.

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from WQAD News 8

by Alexandra Canal and Karen Friar
Yahoo! Finance

US stocks closed mixed after a bouncy (and uneventful) trading session on Tuesday. The moves come as investors bide their time until a key inflation report lands and potentially sheds light on the path of interest rates.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average hugged the flatline while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite edged up about 0.3%. The benchmark S&P 500 climbed more than 0.1%.

Stocks have become marooned ahead of the release of the Consumer Price Index on Wednesday, seen as a pivotal point for a market facing a slower next leg higher after a strong first quarter.

Continue Reading at Finance.Yahoo.com…

from Bloomberg Podcasts

by David Hollerith
Yahoo! Finance, Canada

JPMorgan Chase (JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon said in a new shareholder letter Monday that he is worried about a number of risks to a resilient US economy that could “lead to stickier inflation and higher rates than markets expect.”

He cited large amounts of government spending and efforts by the Federal Reserve to shrink its balance sheet as well as the ongoing wars in the Middle East and Ukraine and their potential to disrupt essential commodities markets, migration, and geopolitical relationships.

“These significant and somewhat unprecedented forces cause us to remain cautious,” he added, noting that the bank is prepared for interest rates “from 2% to 8% or even more.”

Continue Reading at Yahoo.com…

from Fox Business