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BlackRock’s Fink: Inflation Will Be Sticky, but That’ll ‘Help’ Since Wages Are Rising, Food ‘Moderated’ – It Was Bad Before

by Ian Hanchett
Breitbart.com

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.

Host Jim Cramer asked, “[H]ow do we convince them, like we were convinced by our parents, that we are going to make more than they did? I knew, from day one, my father said, you will make more than I do, and that’s what’s going to happen to you. And I had, every Thanksgiving, … you’re going to make more than I do. My kid — no kid I know thinks they’re going to make anywhere near what our generation did.”

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Expect Massive Market Distortions to Worsen as Inflation Accelerates

from King World News

Investors around the world need to expect massive market distortions to worsen as inflation accelerates.

Expect Massive Market Distortions To Worsen

March 27 (King World News) – Gregory Mannarino, writing for the Trends Journal: Despite a world economy contracting at its fastest pace on record, stock prices are rising at a staggering pace. Here in the United States alone in just the first three months of the year, the stock market has hit a new record TWENTY TIMES!

There are several dynamics in play right now which are driving stocks higher. Let’s outline a few of these dynamics to better gauge if this phenomenon will continue, or not.

Continue Reading at KingWorldNews.com…

Gold Advances as Rate Cut Bets Firm Ahead of U.S. Inflation Test

by Anjana Anil
Reuters.com

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.

Spot gold rose 0.2%, to $2,176.59 per ounce, by 02:01 p.m. EDT (1801 GMT), having jumped as much as 1.3% earlier in the session.

U.S. gold futures settled 0.04% higher at $2177.2.

Continue Reading at Reuters.com…

Amid Canada’s Huge Immigration Surge, Population Growth Hits 3.2%, Fuels 10% Rent Inflation, Even as Home Prices Drop

by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street

The record 1.27 million immigrants that arrived last year have to live somewhere.

Canada’s population jumped by 1.27 million people in 2023, to 40.77 million by January 1, an increase of 3.2% from a year ago, the highest year-over-year growth rate since 1957 (3.3%), Statistics Canada said today in its report on the exploding growth of Canada’s population, driven by a huge wave of immigrants; 98% of the population growth came from immigration.

And this sudden population growth has been putting enormous strains on the rental housing market, where rents have spiked, and continue to spike. And it has had a number of other effects that pressure Canadians in their daily lives.

Continue Reading at WolfStreet.com…

Is Javier Milei Making Argentina Great Again?

The new Argentine president is popular with American libertarians, but his record at home looks increasingly populist and authoritarian.

by Antonella Marty
Reason.com

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.

In his address, he referenced Israel Kirzner, an Austrian-school economist and disciple of Ludwig von Mises, who is far outside the intellectual mainstream. He even named his cloned dogs after iconic free market economists Murray Rothbard, Milton Friedman, and Robert Lucas Jr. Many libertarians have been thrilled to hear their ideas articulated so eloquently by the leader of South America’s second-largest nation, sparking widespread enthusiasm.

Continue Reading at Reason.com…

Dollar Tree Raises Price Cap to $7: See Which Items Will Get Price Hikes

The price change will impact over 300 items across 3,000 stores

by Charna Flam
Yahoo! Finance, Canada

Dollar Tree is raising prices on several of its items — again!

The discount retailer announced in its fourth-quarter earnings call earlier this month that it is increasing stores’ price cap to $7.

The recent increase follows the June 2023 $5 cap, reported Yahoo Finance, and the 2021 increase from $1 to $1.25, per CNN.

“This year, across 3,000 stores, we expect to expand our multi-price assortment by over 300 items at price points ranging from $1.50 to $7,” company CEO Rick Dreiling reported during the March 13 call. Dreiling explained that this multi-price assortment would impact the prices of food, pet and personal care items.

Continue Reading at Yahoo.com…

The Federal Reserve’s Folly: An Inflation Rate of 20%

by John S. Tobey
Forbes

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.

The latest twelve months ignores the total inflation period’s preceding months – the cumulative inflation period results that are fully with us today. That means examining the entire Covid period from January 2020, now entering its fifth year.

Why start then?

Because that is just prior to the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Government flooding the financial system with trillions of new dollars to counter the Covid recession.

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Pump-Prices to Hit $4 a Gallon as “Real Sleeper Risk” For Oil Market Looms

from Zero Hedge

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.

The surge in WTI has pushed wholesales gasoline prices up…

And worse, pump prices are set to accelerate even higher in the coming months to an average of $4 a gallon, which would be the highest level since the summer of 2022, according to Bloomberg, citing new data from AAA Automobile Club.

Continue Reading at ZeroHedge.com…

Resurgent Inflation

by David Haggith
GoldSeek

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!

One example I gave was how Powell acknowledged January’s inflation was a lot hotter than the Fed would like to see and that February’s was climbing, though not as intensely, yet said both were likely to be “seasonal problems.” I gave a number of other examples where he was leaning too hard toward the returning rise of inflation being something that will, in his view, likely take care of itself. He admitted the Fed needs to be vigilant for the opposite prospect, as it waits to see if inflation takes care of itself … just in case the Fed is wrong.

Continue Reading at GoldSeek.com…

Baltimore Port’s Closure Threatens Inflation and Bigger Deficits

by John Carney
Breitbart.com

The Port of Baltimore has been brought to a standstill thanks to the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, creating risks to the U.S. economy of additional inflation, diminished productive capacity, and larger government deficits.

The Port of Baltimore was the 17th busiest port in the nation ranked by total tons in 2021, according to the latest data available from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. It is the fourth largest on the East Coast, outsized by the ports of New York-New Jersey; Virginia; and Savanah, Georgia.

Governor Wes Moore that the port handled a record 52.3 million tons of foreign cargo, worth $80.8 billion, in 2023. That was a record high.

Moore described the port as”one of the largest economic generators” in Maryland.

Continue Reading at Breitbart.com…