from Peter Schiff
Don’t Give Biden a Pass on Inflation. Don’t Give Trump a Pass On Covid.
Will the real president of the United States during the years 2020 through 2022 please stand up?
by Eric Boehm
Reason.com
President Donald Trump oversaw the implementation of COVID-19 lockdowns. President Joe Biden presided over the worst period of inflation in more than four decades. Those are the facts.
But they are both highly inconvenient facts for the two deeply unpopular old men running for president this year. Both would likely prefer the American public to believe that the office of the presidency was vacant from the start of the pandemic through the summer of 2022 when inflation peaked at an astonishing annualized rate of 9.1 percent.
Biden is now pushing that retconning of reality to new levels. On Tuesday, in an interview with Yahoo Finance, Biden claimed that inflation was “at 9 percent when I came in, and it’s now down around 3 percent.” As The Washington Post notes, this is at least the third time in recent weeks that Biden has blatantly fibbed about the rate of inflation when he took office.
April CPI: Worst Good News Ever
by Mike Maharrey
GoldSeek
The monthly rise in prices based on the Consumer Price Index (CPI) came in slightly lower than projected, sending a wave of euphoria across the financial landscape.
The consensus is cooling inflation puts Federal Reserve interest rate cuts back on the table.
The Dow Jones, S&P 500, and the NASDAQ all hit record highs after the data came out on Wednesday. A CNN headline called the CPI report “encouraging” and an analyst from CIBC Private Wealth US told CNN the data “supports a Fed rate cut in the fall.” Yahoo Finance called it a “soft reading on consumer prices.”
It was great news, except it wasn’t.
April’s Disinflation Delivery
by Alexander W. Salter
The American Institute for Economic Research
Although inflation remains high,disinflation continued in April. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the Consumer Price Index (CPI) increased 0.3 percent last month, for a year-over-year change of 3.4 percent. The Core CPI, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, also rose 0.3 percent on the month and 3.6 percent year-over-year.
On a continuously compounded annualized basis, consumer price inflation fell for the second straight month. Headline CPI inflation was 5.3 percent in February and 3.7 percent in April. Core CPI inflation, which held steady from February to March, declined from 4.3 to 3.5 percent. We are still a ways away from the Federal Reserve’s 2-percent goal. But at least we’re heading in the right direction again.
U.S. Wholesale Inflation Just Hit Its Highest Rate in a Year
by Alicia Wallace
CNN
Americans already contending with persistent and stubbornly high inflation just got more unwelcome news on Tuesday: There are more price hikes likely coming down the pike.
Wholesale inflation picked up in April to its highest rate in a year, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Tuesday.
The Producer Price Index, which measures the change in prices that manufacturers pay to suppliers, was 2.2% for the 12 months ended in April, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Tuesday.
That gain is higher than what was seen in March, which was downwardly revised from 2.1% to 1.8%.
Fact Check: White House Tries to Justify Biden’s Lies On Inflation
by John Carney
Breitbart.com
Claim: Biden’s false claim about inflation was really just making the point that the causes of inflation were already in place when President Joe Biden took office.
Verdict: False and misleading.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Wednesday said that President Joe Biden’s false claim that inflation was at nine percent when he took office was intended to point out that the causes that led to inflation reaching that high were in place when he took office in January of 2020.
Scouting Report: Inflation, GME, and Cows with Paul Kiker
Even the rich aren’t safe anymore. They’re on the menu too. Probably best if they joined the crowds seeking to change things before things spiral any further out of control. Oh, and we discuss cows.
by Dr. Chris Martenson
Chris Martenson’s Peak Prosperity
I was packed from the get-go this morning with interviews and content so my scouting report got a little behind. Next thing I knew Paul Kiker and I were on deck to record our weekly Finance U podcast, and so I invited him to sit with me through this scouting report.
In what should be a truly disturbing shot across the bow of many a yacht, even rich people are being cut off from home insurance in CA and other markets. Paul theorizes that insurance companies were the dumb money in commercial real estate, they are hurting badly, and so are reeling in their policies or charging drastically more to try and make up for the losses.
The message is clear from the system; little people need to sit down and shut up. At least that’s what the former chair of the SEC said more or less directly when he frowned upon ‘roaring kitty’ posting a meme to Twitter that merely showed a man sitting forward in his chair.
Peter Schiff: Don’t Buy the Fed’s Celebratory Gunfire
by Peter Schiff
Schiff Sovereign
Did you hear the cheering in the streets? The celebratory gunfire coming from the Federal Reserve? The champagne bottles across Wall Street being uncorked?
What’s got people so excited today is the monthly CPI report— which showed consumer prices increasing by ‘only’ 3.4% year-over-year. And core inflation, which strips out food and energy prices, increased by ‘only’ 3.6%.
That was about 0.1% better than last month, so, of course, both the Fed and the White House are doing a victory lap. Expect Joe Biden to ramble incoherently about his economic prowess any moment now.
This inflation report was all the market needed to jump right back into the fantasy that inflation is licked… and the Fed can quickly and safely start cutting rates again.
PPI and CPI
by Karl Denninger
Market-Ticker.org
Let’s do the forward look first, since that’s what really ought to matter — PPI.
The index for final demand less foods, energy, and trade services moved up 0.4 percent in April after rising 0.2 percent in March. For the 12 months ended in April, prices for final demand less foods, energy, and trade services increased 3.1 percent, the largest advance since climbing 3.4 percent for the 12 months ended April 2023.
So much for the forward looking indices relaxing. Uh, nope. And what is especially troublesome is that both goods and services moved in unison.
Remember we are a majority-services economy. People often disregard goods inflation in the pipeline with some level of justification because its simply a smaller piece of the basket and is subject to quite a bit of discounting as you go through the stages of production. Neither is true for services.
Beneath the Skin of CPI Inflation, April: After Some Zigs, a Zag. But 6-Month Core CPI Hits 4.0%, 6-Month Core Services CPI Hits 6.0%, Both Highest Since Mid-2023
by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street
Month-to-month data is volatile. We’ll look at the trends.
After months of worsening data on CPI inflation, we got still bad, but less bad, data today for April by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And perhaps it was just another month-to-month squiggle, to be turned around over the next few months, of which we had many. Or perhaps it was a change in trend.
We’ll get to the details in a moment. But in summary, on a year-over-year basis:
AIER Everyday Price Index Rises for Fifth Consecutive Month
by Peter C. Earle
The American Institute for Economic Research
The AIER Everyday Price Index rose for a fifth consecutive month in April 2024. The 0.59 percent increase brings our proprietary inflation measure to 290.9.
[…] In April 2024, fourteen constituents of the Everyday Price Index rose in price, with the largest increases taking place in motor fuel, food away from home, and personal care services. In nine categories prices declined, the largest of those coming in fuels and utilities, domestic services, and pet and pet products.
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released Consumer Price Index (CPI) data for April 2024 on May 15, 2024. The month-over-month headline came in 0.1 percent less than the 0.4 percent expected. Meanwhile, core month-over-month was in line with forecasts (0.3 percent), as were both the year-over-year headline (3.4 percent) and year-over-year core (3.6 percent) readings.