Core inflation in Mar 2025 year over year is 2.64%, still ahead of the lowest reading in the last year at 2.63% in Jun 2024.
Core inflation has been sideways for a year and more, and nowhere near 2% or below as in the pre-pandemic era.
The revised 2.96% for Feb 2025 is equivalent to the 2.97% reading in Mar 2024.
That Feb spike helps explain why the 1Q2025 reading was up 3.5% from 4Q2024.
CNBC usually runs a big story on core personal consumption expenditures before 9:00 AM every month when this report comes out, but not now under Howard Lutnick.
It's a long way down to normal.
The 2022 lows got us back only to the 2000 high, and people thought it was the end of the world when all it was was a good beginning lol.
Nominal GDP in 1Q2025 is estimated at $29.9776 trillion by the BEA this morning.
$SPX closed at 5611.85 on March 31, 2025.
That yields a ratio of 187 vs. the historical mean of 81, or 131% overvalued.
Guru Focus gets similar results from the Buffett Indicator:
Shrink, shrank, shrunk.
U.S. economy shrunk 0.3% in the first quarter as Trump policy uncertainty weighed on businesses
... fueled by an unexpected rise in imports as companies and consumers sought to get ahead of the Trump tariffs ...
In neither case however did Conservatives gain enough seats to form a government.
The Conservative Pierre Poilievre loses this election to the Liberal Mark Carney.
After Liberal Justin Trudeau resigned as PM in January, Carney became Liberal Party leader and PM in March, and promptly eliminated the consumer carbon tax ahead of this election, taking away a key issue of the Conservatives.
That, and Trump's hostility toward Canada, made this election outcome a fait accompli.
This story, for example, says nothing about evading a Houthi missile.
Fighter jet slips off carrier hangar deck in Red Sea, one minor injury
And is this even the Truman?
I mean, that's an F-35 going in the drink, not the same jet.
You can't trust anybody these days apparently.
Journalists gloss over. My eyes glaze over.
So embarrassing.
Rod Dreher, world citizen.
The consensus estimate for tomorrow's core pce inflation number is 2.6% year over year in March, and 0.1% month over month. In February the actual numbers were 2.8% year over year and 0.4% month over month.
The consensus estimate for tomorrow's real GDP estimate is 0.4% vs. 2.4% actual the previous quarter. Yes, you read that right, 0.4%. GDPNow's final read on 1Q2025 out this morning is . . . -2.7%.
Yikes.
The ADP employment change will also be reported. Consensus is for +108,000 vs. +155,000 actual the previous month.
Nonfarm payrolls comes out on Friday. Consensus is for +130,000 for April vs. +228,000 actual in March.
... Trump has declared eight national emergencies in his first 100 days, more than any other president. ...
Invoking an emergency has come to mean that the president can bypass Congress, intimidate courts, and run roughshod over normal procedures, even civil liberties. And while the current number is striking, it’s not a Trumpian innovation. Presidents have become addicted to emergency powers, unlike many other countries. The U.S. Constitution says nothing about how to declare or end an emergency. This has allowed presidents to organically assume a wide range of powers. This usually happened during wartime. ...
Today, Americans are living under dozens of ongoing national emergencies, mostly tied to foreign policy like sanctions. The oldest standing one, targeting Iran, dates back to the Carter administration. Others come from the post-9/11 era, when Congress granted the executive branch sweeping new powers, all in the name of national security. Both parties have used emergency powers to serve their broader agendas. In 2022, President Joe Biden attempted to forgive student loan debt by using an emergency authority related to the COVID-19 pandemic. ...
More.
Like failing to establish a formula for the continued growth of representation, thus unwittingly concentrating power in an oligarchic Congress by default, the constitution's silence about emergencies is yet one more example of the founders' inability to imagine every which way one branch might try to exploit it, which is an increasingly pressing problem in our increasingly illiberal society.
I remember he officiated at a funeral once, and yep, he wore a blue suit.
Even when I visited him at his home he was wearing a blue suit.
More remarkably, though, on pay day once a month my boss would go to the bank, take out a wad of cash, and then pay his mortgage in cash, walk to the phone company and pay in cash, and walk to the utility company and pay in cash.
He'd also pay me in cash.
Then he'd walk to the hotel bar with his friends for the evening and pay in cash.
He paid for everything in cash, unlike this guy.
Standards have really declined.
And Elon Musk wanted this guy to be Treasury Secretary instead of Bessent, which is even funnier.
As usual the alarmists and doomsayers are . . . alarmists and doomsayers.
Demand for US debt is steady and strong this week:
3MO at 4.225% average vs. 4.225% previously
6MO at 4.05 vs. 4.06 previously
2Y at 3.795 vs. 3.984 previously
5Y at 3.995 vs. 4.1 previously
7Y at 4.123 vs. 4.233 previously.
Yields across the curve last night averaged 4.240, down from 4.261 a week ago, below the Daily Fed Funds Rate at 4.33.
The GDPNow model estimate for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the first quarter of 2025 is -2.5 percent on April 24, down from -2.2 percent on April 17.
More.
The BEA's first estimate of first quarter real GDP is scheduled for release on April 30th.
... U.S. District Judge Stephanie A. Gallagher in Baltimore on Wednesday ruled that removing him without a chance to complete his asylum petition or challenge his deportation violated the settlement agreement. Cristian, and any other person who had been removed in violation of the settlement agreement, should be returned, she said. ...
More.
... By politely and factually shoving all that disgrace in their smug faces, Tim Pool diminished and embarrassed the media elite, which is crucial in our noble crusade to someday enjoy the lamentations of their women. ...
More.
The cruelty is indeed the point of MAGA.
China says no ongoing trade talks with the U.S., calls for canceling ‘unilateral’ tariffs
"At present there are absolutely no negotiations on the economy and trade
between China and the U.S.,” said Ministry of Commerce Spokesperson He
Yadong. ... "If the U.S. really wants to resolve the problem ... it should cancel all the unilateral measures on China,” He said.
The Treasury Secretary would know, of course, because he has to report income and outlays every month.
One person who witnessed the dispute said:
It was quite a scene. It was loud. And I mean, loud.
The story is here.
The casualties of America’s loss of glassware manufacturing to China
... the U.S. glass industry lost almost 40,000 manufacturing jobs between 2000 to 2008. At the same time, China’s share of the U.S. market rose from 3% to 31%.
Boeing hopes to find new buyers for up to 50 planes returned by China
... Two Boeing jets have returned to the US from China,
with another on the way, after the imposition of steep 125% tariffs on
American imports. China imposed the levies in retaliation to the White
House’s 145% rate that threatens to significantly slow down the world
economy. ...
Blank Sailings Rattle Trans-Pacific Trade as China Imports Nosedive
... Container shipping companies have blanked at least 80 sailings this month, compared to 51 in March 2020, when volumes crashed amid early Covid-19 lockdowns, Sea-Intelligence said. ...
Bloomberg published the story just before noon on Tuesday reporting the closed-door meeting where Bessent said he expected the tariff stand-off with China to de-escalate, and that the current situation, which amounts to a trade embargo, is unsustainable and will de-escalate in the very near future.
Markets opened Tuesday morning strongly higher and by 11:00 AM were up 110 points on the $SPX.
The Secretary of the Treasury shouldn't be having closed door meetings with the very people most likely to profit from what he has to say.
This is quite literally fascist economics.
... Spot gold slipped 2.2% at $3,305.79 an ounce by 09:23 a.m. ET (1323 GMT), after hitting a record high of $3,500.05 in the previous session. U.S. gold futures dropped 2.9% to $3,320.40. ...
More.
The chutzpah of these parasites is really something, but Real Clear should be ashamed for promoting it.
The billionaires complain that expenditures far outpace revenues, but taxes must never be raised to pay for them:
"My answer on tax policy, what should tax rates be? Just always a little bit lower. I'm not going to tell you the number, they should always be a little bit lower."
Billionaires for tax cuts!
Meanwhile the $40 billion USAID budget was nothing but a virtue signaling food for the poor scam to these two:
"And so much of this left-wing philanthropy nonprofit world, I think it was just a cover for borderline criminal activity."
Spot gold was up 1.4% at $3,472.49 an ounce, as of 0247 GMT, after touching a record high of $3,473.03 per ounce earlier in the session.
More.
Hochul fought back, declaring: “The cameras are staying on.” ...
Gold surges to a record above $3,400 as Trump threatens Fed independence
Gold prices broke $3,400 on Monday, hitting a new record as President Donald Trump’s threats against the Federal Reserve’s independence and his tariffs shake investor confidence in the U.S. economy.
Gold futures jumped about 2.69% to $3,418 per ounce by 8:20 a.m. ET on Monday, with investors buying the precious metal as the dollar hit a three-year low.
Gold has jumped about 29% since the start of the year and nearly 8% since Trump unveiled his sweeping tariffs on April 2.
Trump said last Thursday that Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s “termination cannot come fast enough,” after the U.S. central bank chief warned that the president’s tariffs will likely increase inflation in the near term. ...
Video from Friday night shows Immigration and Customs Enforcement buses full of Venezuelan migrants headed toward an airport in North Texas before abruptly turning around before the Supreme Court ruled the Trump administration must, for now, refrain from deporting Venezuelan men based in the state under the Alien Enemies Act. ...
As the motorcade was headed for the airport, a last-minute federal hearing on the matter was taking place in Washington.
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, who has been hearing a case related to the flights to El Salvador, scheduled an emergency hearing for Friday evening — just hours after a bus rolled up to Bluebonnet.
Shortly before that hearing kicked off, ACLU attorneys also asked the Supreme Court to step in.
“We hear they are on buses on the way to the airport,” said Lee Gelernt, the lawyer for the ACLU arguing on behalf of detainees on the verge of being deported under the Alien Enemies Act. ...
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