Australia’s central bank will likely hold its key interest rate at a 12-year high on Tuesday as it tries to restrain consumer prices that have been underpinned by an ultra-tight employment market.

by Swati Pandey
Financial Post

(Bloomberg) — Australia’s central bank will likely hold its key interest rate at a 12-year high on Tuesday as it tries to restrain consumer prices that have been underpinned by an ultra-tight employment market.

The Reserve Bank will keep the cash rate at 4.35% for a fifth straight meeting, economists surveyed by Bloomberg predicted. The decision will be released at 2:30 p.m. in Sydney, followed an hour later by Governor Michele Bullock’s press conference.

Australia’s policy meeting follows a highly-anticipated decision by the Federal Reserve last week, when Chair Jerome Powell signaled he wasn’t in a rush to ease monetary policy even after a soft inflation report. Bullock is likely to draw on the same playbook by retaining her mild hawkish bias in acknowledgment of sticky consumer prices.

Continue Reading at FinancialPost.com…

from Soar Financially

by Peter Schiff
Schiff Sovereign

“Americans are feeling uneasy for reasons that are hard to pin down,” quipped economist Paul Krugman in a New York Times interview published earlier this week.

Reasons that are hard to pin down? Bear in mind that this man received a Nobel Prize– our society’s most prominent award for intellectual achievement. Yet he doesn’t have the foggiest idea why his fellow citizens may be feeling uneasy.

Perhaps it’s the ever-lurking prospect of escalated warfare. Or the exasperation over dysfunctional government, weaponization of the justice system, and manipulative media. Or the invasion of millions of migrants streaming across the southern border, virtually unchecked.

Granted those issues may be outside of Krugman’s wheelhouse. But you’d think that he would at least understand people’s unease over inflation.

Continue Reading at SchiffSovereign.com…

from Kerry Lutz's Financial Survival Network

by Mike Maharrey
GoldSeek

Strike up the band and wave the victory banners! Inflation is dead!

Or is it?

The May Consumer Price Index (CPI) report was cause for optimism. But price inflation is like that stubborn weed in the driveway. Just when you think you’ve killed it for good, it pokes back through a crack.

Keep in mind that this time last year, we were also talking about a victory over inflation.

In July 2023, an analyst told CNBC, “There has been significant progress made on the inflation front, and today’s report confirmed that while most of the country is dealing with hotter temperatures outside, inflation is finally cooling,”

It wasn’t quite what it seemed.

Continue Reading at GoldSeek.com…

from Rebel Capitalist

by Alasdair MacLeod
Gold Money

Monetary authorities and domestic users do not understand the true relationship between their fiat currency, the threats to its purchasing power, and the relationship with gold.

It’s now increasingly assumed that the US economy is not performing as well as the statistics suggest, and that the Fed must cut interest rates and keep on cutting. The assumption is based on a mixture of Keynesian hope and market experience of the last three or four decades, which cover the work-experience of today’s investment managers. Last week I quoted from an article by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in The Daily Telegraph of 5 June, who wrote that “Citigroup says that the Fed will have to cut interest rates in July and at every meeting until mid-2025”. Therefore, a research report from one of the largest banks in the US is evidence of this view.

It must be admitted that in the short term, such a strong consensus over interest rates can become self-fulfilling.

Continue Reading at GoldMoney.com…

from Peak Prosperity

by Reuters
Kitco

June 12 (Reuters) – U.S. stocks rose broadly on Wednesday, with the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq touching fresh record highs after softer inflation data lifted hopes for central bank rate cuts, while Apple overtook Microsoft to become the world’s most valuable company.

As the focus shifts to the Federal Reserve’s policy announcement, markets will zero in on Chair Jerome Powell’s press conference and the Fed’s updated “dot plot”, which shows where policymakers expect interest rates to stand this year and long term.

Interest rates are overwhelmingly expected to remain unchanged at the meeting.

Continue Reading at Kitco.com…

from GoldSwitzerland by VON GREYERZ

The president has tried to shift blame for inflation, interest rate hikes, and an overall decimation of consumers’ purchasing power.

by Veronique de Rugy
Reason.com

Government overspending, an activity the Biden administration has taken to a new level, has sent the country into an inflationary spiral. Through trillions of dollars in COVID-19 relief programs, infrastructure spending, vote-buying student loan forgiveness programs, and a political “Build Back Better Agenda,” the White House has flooded the economy and decimated consumers’ purchasing power. We’re paying more and getting less for everything from energy to food.

According to the House Budget Committee, the average family of four is paying around $1,143 more each month than it was in early 2021 for the same goods and services; this includes increased gasoline costs. Rather than reversing course, President Joe Biden is telling voters the private sector is to blame and that he has the answers. He’s doubling down by proposing more stifling, job-killing regulations to “fix” the problem—regulations which will inevitably send inflation to new heights.

Continue Reading at Reason.com…

from ITM TRADING, INC.

by Tekoa Da Silva
GoldSeek

Tekoa Da Silva: Rick I’d like to ask you today about the decade of the 1970s.

During the decade of the 1970s U.S. President Richard Nixon took the U.S. off the gold standard. There were bouts of wage and price controls, gasoline rationing, an oil embargo and political turbulence.

From 1970 to 1980 the price of oil went from roughly $1.21 bbl to about $40.00 bbl. Gold went from $35.00 oz. to over $800.00 oz., and the CRB commodity index moved up about 300% during the decade.

Rick in terms of where you were at the beginning of the decade – I understand you graduated high school in 1971. You started college at the University of British Columbia, and you were contemplating a career at that point in natural resources tax law, is that right?

Continue Reading at GoldSeek.com…

from Gregory Mannarino

by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street

Services are big, and that one-month outlier was massive, and it drove down Core CPI and overall CPI.

The Consumer Price Index for May, on a month-to-month basis, was pushed down by the continued sharp drop in durable goods prices, a drop in energy prices, flat food prices, and “core services” prices that rose at the smallest pace since late 2021 in a stunning whiplash-inducing outlier move, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics today. So, we’ll start with that outlier because it’s so big, and because core services are so big — they account for 65% of total CPI — and because that outlier drove everything else.

Continue Reading at WolfStreet.com…

from CNBC Television

by Karl Denninger
Market-Ticker.org

This is not a “cold” report folks….

The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) was unchanged in May on a seasonally adjusted basis, after rising 0.3 percent in April, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 3.3 percent before seasonal adjustment.

The unchanged was caused by a decrease in gasoline, mostly, which everyone has seen in advance.

But the index in rents and owners equivalent rent were both up 0.4% which would annualize to 4.9%, or 2.5x the Fed’s “target” in these very large and unavoidable consumer expense. Further, medical care (another mandatory expense for most) was up even more, up 0.5% on the month and what’s worse is that prescription drugs were up 2.1% on the month which would annualize to more than 20%.

Continue Reading at Market-Ticker.org…

from WallStForMainSt

by John Carney
Breitbart.com

America got some good news on inflation on Wednesday, possibly opening the door for lower interest rates this year.

The Consumer Price Index climbed 3.3 percent in May from a year earlier, down from 3.4 percent in April, the Labor Department reported.

The “core” index—which excludes volatile food and energy prices to provide a clearer view of the underlying trend—rose 3.4 percent last month, down from 3.6 percent the previous month. That is the lowest annual increase in core prices since April 2021.

Compared to the prior month, the broad measure of consumer prices was unchanged. Core prices increased by 0.2 percent.

Continue Reading at Breitbart.com…

from Palisades Gold Radio