by William J. Luther
The American Institute for Economic Research
When inflation picked back up in January 2024, many commentators described it as more noise than signal. The latest data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) casts doubt on that view.
The Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index (PCEPI), which is the Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of inflation, grew at a continuously compounding annual rate of 4.0 percent in February. The PCEPI has grown at an annualized rate of 3.3 percent over the last three months and 2.5 percent over the last six months. Prices today are 8.7 percentage points higher than they would have been had they grown at an annualized rate of 2.0 percent since January 2020.
During an interview aired on Tuesday’s broadcast of CNBC’s “Mad Money,” BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said that he thinks “we’re going to have higher inflation than most people believe, and much of that is going to help those people who are worried. Wage inflation is continuing. Food inflation has moderated in the last six to 12 months.” But we failed to account for how bad it was in late 2022 and early 2023.
Investors around the world need to expect massive market distortions to worsen as inflation accelerates.
March 26 (Reuters) – Gold prices climbed on Tuesday, as expectations of interest rate cuts by the U.S. Federal Reserve firmed, while investors waited for data due later in the week for underlying inflation trends that will help gauge the timing of these cuts.
The record 1.27 million immigrants that arrived last year have to live somewhere.
In January, Argentine President Javier Milei went to Davos, Switzerland, to lecture the rich and powerful about the miracles of capitalism. During his speech at the World Economic Forum, Milei explained to his audience that entrepreneurs are heroes, socialism leads to corruption, and private property is the key to prosperity.
Dollar Tree is raising prices on several of its items — again!
All the inflation reports have a fatal flaw: A reliance on a moving, 12-month time period. The use of the latest, trailing twelve months is easy to get – It’s on the front page of the BLS’s monthly CPI report. But that doesn’t mean it’s the right number to focus on.
US oil prices have recently jumped above the $80 a barrel mark – the highest level since late 2023, sending worrying signals to the Federal Reserve and overly anxious White House.
In this weekend’s Deeper Dive, I dug into the many ways in which Powell’s words show a strong bias toward rate cuts that is likely to cause him to treat rising inflation like it is only transitory. That means the Fed may be as likely to let the growth in inflation go until it, again, becomes so hot it is hard to take back down. Because we never learn!