by Ireland Owens
DailyCaller.com
Dollar stores are reporting softened demand and increased financial stress among their lower-income consumers, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Some businesses say their customers are spending less money toward the end of the month and more focused on purchasing from cheap store brands, according to the WSJ. Dollar General said in a December earnings call that its best-performing category in its last quarter was its “value valley” aisle, which offers $1 products, the WSJ reported.
Dollar stores are also saying that consumers put off shopping for special occasions like Halloween until the last minute, according to the WSJ. Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said at a conference on Dec. 3 that the “inflationary cycle has been really detrimental” for lower-income families, the WSJ reported.
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Not long ago, the Federal Reserve’s favorite measure of inflation looked tantalizingly close to the central bank’s goal of a 2% annual rate. But in November, it likely headed in the wrong direction.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans hoping for lower borrowing costs for homes, credit cards and cars may be disappointed after this week’s Federal Reserve meeting. The Fed’s policymakers are likely to signal fewer interest rate cuts next year than were previously expected.
Price growth sped up a bit in November, a sign that efforts to cool inflation may be stalling.
As with the pandemic, the event is probably designed to start slowly, and then escalate over time. I believe many of these “drones” are alien tech created by the “breakaway civilization” group. Not mentioned in the interview – I suspect the ultimate planned event would be a “decapitation” attack, which will be blamed on a false-flag target. Remember them pre-bunking how “Iran wants to assassinate Trump” a month or two back? Senile Joe (and maybe even Cackles) could end up “dying suddenly” following attacks on the White House – but only after all the pre-pardons, of course. If I were Senile Joe & Cackles, I’d hold off with those “pre-pardons” until the very last moment. Trump probably would be a target too.
When one of my readers sent me a photo of egg prices at a store in western Washington state, I could hardly believe what I was seeing. I clearly remember when I could purchase a carton of quality eggs at the grocery store for just 99 cents, but thanks to inflation and a bird flu crisis that never seems to end, those days are long gone. Now it is common to pay five, six, seven or even eight dollars for a carton of eggs. In fact, it probably won’t be too long before we crack the ten dollar barrier. In the old days, eggs were considered to be a very inexpensive way to feed your family, but now eggs prices have gone completely insane.
According to the latest monthly statement from the Treasury Department, the US government spent $668 billion in November, the second month of the 2025 fiscal year. That’s in addition to October’s spending total of $584 billion, for a total of $1.25 trillion in spending so far this year. All that spending is a drain on the real economy. But it gets worse: the federal government has only collected $628 billion in revenue for the same period, meaning the two-month total deficit is now as $624 billion.
It seems the best we can hope for on the inflation front is a CPI report “in line with forecasts.”
The Federal Reserve is set to take a more cautious approach to interest rate cuts on fears that the Trump administration’s policies will stoke higher inflation, according to academic economists polled by the Financial Times.
If you look at the market prices of consumer goods you’ll much more often than not be blinded to inflation’s truth.