by Nikolai G. Wenzel
The American Institute for Economic Research
The eyes of the world may be on the US presidential election. But another, usually sleepy campaign is underway: European Parliament elections in June 2024. Most of the action takes place in the executive and bureaucracy (the European Commission). But Parliament must approve laws. This could have interesting results for the European Union (EU) Green Deal.
The Green Deal was first implemented in 2019, with a series of environmental measures. Most notably, the EU committed to cutting CO2 emissions by 55 percent by 2030. The EU is set to push for carbon neutrality by 2050, a measure that will require approval from the newly installed parliament. But, since the summer of 2023, the Green Deal has been on regulatory pause, as the EU faces a “greenlash” against environmental policies. In the face of inflation, consumers and trade groups are starting to resent the cost of environmental regulation. Over the past few months, proposals on industrial pollution, pesticide restrictions, and conservation have all been tabled at the EU level. A ban on new combustion engines, effective 2035, still stands, but it is facing increasing resistance.
Inflation stressing you out? Making you wish you had just a touch of nicotine in your system? Unfortunately, that’ll cost a lot. While prices economywide have risen 3.1 percent in the last year, cigarette prices have jumped 8 percent. On top of federal and state taxes that often make up half the price of a pack, tobacco companies tend to raise their prices faster than inflation to make up for declining sales volume. These and the rest of the numbers in the Reason Sindex use data from November 2023.
On Monday’s broadcast of CNN’s “The Source” CNN Senior Political Commentator and former Obama Adviser David Axelrod stated that while he thinks President Joe Biden is doing a good job as President and that he’s concerned about the democracy issue in the 2024 election, people who are “are people who aren’t concerned about what they paid for their groceries that are on the kitchen table,” and that “if you don’t have the privilege not to” avoid “living with the concerns about inflation and sort of the day-to-day concerns of life,” “you’re probably not talking about that.”
If inflation screams and no one hears it, does an airplane fall in the forest? That’s a good question for today. Inflation ripped upward, and the stock market shrugged it off as if it heard nothing, while a good part of the media reported satisfactory results … but not everyone because some saw it as horrible. So, let’s start with the really bad news that almost everyone ignored and then end at the really mundane and predictable news that almost everyone on Wall Street focused on.
Core services inflation dished up bad head fakes last time we had this mess in 1966-1982. Mention of a rate hike crops up in a Fed speech.
During an interview with ABC News on Thursday, White House Senior Adviser Gene Sperling stated that “people have been through a tough few years” but the PCE (Personal Consumption Expenditures) price index reading is “very close to normal” and “prices are moving in the right direction” and “moderating.” But you can’t expect them to not go up.
Inflation picked up in January, according to the latest data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). 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 4.1 percent in the first month of the year. The PCEPI has grown at an annualized rate of 1.8 percent over the last three months and 2.5 percent over the last six months. Prices today are 8.4 percentage points higher than they would have been had they grown at an annualized rate of 2.0 percent since January 2020.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest price inflation data, CPI inflation in January accelerated, and price inflation hasn’t proven nearly as transitory as the regime’s economists have long predicted.
A little discussion about this thing we call “inflation” after the January CPI report.