from NBC News
What if There’s No Landing at All, but Flight at Higher Speed and Altitude Than Normal, with Higher and Rising Inflation?
by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street
That scenario is re-emerging as a real possibility in recent economic data.
When the Fed cut its policy rates on September 18, it looked at labor market data showing a sudden slowdown of job creation to weak levels, and it looked at decent consumer spending data, so-so income growth, and a very thin and plunging savings rate. And the trends looked lousy.
But starting 11 days after the Fed’s decision, the revisions and new data arrived. And the whole scenario changed.
Alasdair MacLeod: Inflation Isn’t Finished but the Dollar Soon May Be
by Chris Powell
GATA.org
Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:
GoldMoney research director Alasdair Macleod, speaking three weeks ago to a conference sponsored by Southbank Investment Research in London, warned that inflation is far from finished and that the decline and fall of the U.S. dollar and the rise of gold will continue as much of the rest of the world looks for new ways of conducting international trade.
His remarks were 18 minutes long and can be viewed at Vimeo here:
As Economists Are Today, Milton Friedman Was Incorrect About Inflation
[Ed. Note: We’ll find out soon enough… It seems unlikely that history will remember the name ‘John Tamny’ before it remembers ‘Milton Friedman.’]
by John Tamny
Forbes
In a video that’s gone viral, the late Milton Friedman correctly asserts about inflation that “consumers don’t produce it,” and “producers don’t produce it.” Only for Friedman to go off track with the observation that “too much government spending” does produce inflation.
Ignored by Friedman was that governments aren’t some kind of other capable of extracting spending power from Pluto, rather governments only have the power to spend insofar as they can extract the spending power from the private sector first. All spending, whether by individuals, businesses, or governments, follows production.
Vance Vindicated: Egg Prices Are Up Nearly 40% as Food Inflation Surges Again
by John Carney
Breitbart.com
J.D. Vance was right: the price of eggs is soaring.
The vice presidential hopeful made headlines last when he pointed to the rising price of eggs as evidence of the failed economic policies of the Biden-Harris administration.
“Look at the prices here. Things are way too expensive, and they’re way too expensive because of Kamala Harris’ policies,” Vance said.“Eggs, when Kamala Harris took office, were short of $1.50 a dozen. Now, a dozen eggs will cost you around $4, thanks to Kamala Harris’ inflationary policies.”
Critics attacked Vance, arguing that egg prices were not as high as he claimed. But Vance was more correct than his critics, who were relying on old data.
The Inflation Train is Arriving On Schedule, and the Labor Train is Departing
by David Haggith
GoldSeek
The Fed’s financial plans are running off the rails already. With summer just gone by and the Fed’s first rate cut barely out of the station, already the bond vigilantes are pushing bond interest rates back up, and voting Fed members are already talking about stalling their future rate cuts—all due to inflation being back on the rise. The timing of inflation’s arrival is as I expected, but it is not at all what the Fed was hoping to see.
Bond investors are referred to as “vigilantes” when they bring true justice to interest rates by going in the opposite direct of what the Fed intends because keeping the market in sync with reality demands it. They do this when they smell inflation stinking up the air like a dead rat in the walls of the house because they don’t want to lose to inflation as they wait to maturity to get their money back out of bonds.
Inflated…
by Karl Denninger
Market-Ticker.org
Expecting more rate cuts?
Well, now both the CPI and employment report say you’re nuts.
Now the markets say yes — and in fact they already have with the IRX (13 week bill) trading at 4.53% right now. So in point of fact the markets, which always drive rates (not The Fed), are indeed trading below Fed Funds.
Worse, the TNX, the 10 year, is still trading at 4.1% this morning meaning the 13/10 year is still deeply inverted.
Now add into this not one but two serious storms and the damage they have caused — which of course will spike demand for all manner of things. Have we forgotten the most-basic economic equation, MV = PQ?
Beneath the Skin of CPI Inflation: “Core CPI” Accelerates for Third Month On Sharp Flip of Used Vehicle Prices, Sticky Services Inflation. Gasoline Plunged
by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street
Surging homeowner insurance and other homeowner costs fuel OER CPI, which is now hotter than rent CPI.
On a month-to-month basis, the “core” Consumer Price Index – which excludes the volatile food and energy components – rose by 0.31% (+3.8% annualized) in September from August, the third acceleration in a row, and the biggest increase since March, driven by suddenly rising prices of used vehicles, in what is a sharp flip from the steep plunges before, and stubbornly high inflation in services (blue line in the chart below).
America is Now On “the Second Half of the Chess Board”
by James Hickman
Schiff Sovereign
Over fifteen centuries ago, according to an ancient Sanskrit legend, a mythical Hindu priest named Sissa was ordered to invent a new board game to entertain the king of Taligana.
Sissa labored over the task for quite some time, but he eventually brought the King a military strategy game with a 64-square board and beautifully hand-carved pieces. Today we call this game chess. And according to the legend, the King was absolutely enamored with it.
So enamored, in fact, the King offered Sissa any reward he desired. So, the priest asked for a single grain of wheat to be placed on the first square of the chess board. Then two grains on the second square. Four grains on the third. Eight grains on the fourth. And so on.
The Big Con: No Matter the Form, Easy Money is Still a Fraud
by Jane L. Johnson
Mises.org
P.T. Barnum purportedly proclaimed that “There’s a sucker born every minute”, though there is no proof that he actually said it. Whether true in Barnum’s time or in today’s social-media era, however, the phrase describes those gullible enough to believe anything, even when their better judgment (if they possess any of that) tells them otherwise.
Now comes a story about TikTok, where 40 percent of young adults get their news these days. Recent news sources report TikTok videos portraying people believing they could get “free” cash from Chase Bank ATMs. These videos showed people depositing checks for large sums of money at Chase ATMs, and then making withdrawals for smaller yet substantial amounts, leading them to believe they had discovered a computer glitch to take advantage of. One video viewed over 100,000 times shows a young woman calling her mother and telling her she could get $40,000 to $50,000 out of her Chase account by depositing a check and taking advantage of the “glitch.”
Inflation: Consumer Price Increases in September Come in Slightly Hotter Than Estimates
by Alexandra Canal
Yahoo! Finance
A closely watched report on US inflation showed consumer price increases ticked lower on an annual basis during the month of September but “core” prices remained sticky, according to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics released Thursday morning.
The Consumer Price Index (CPI) increased 2.4% over the prior year in September, a slight deceleration compared to August’s 2.5% annual gain in prices. The yearly increase, which was the lowest annual headline reading since Feb. 2021, came in hotter than economist expectations of a 2.3% annual increase.