There's never any discussion about how core inflation vaulted to the current levels well before the war in Ukraine even began.
The reason for the inflation surge is Biden's war for green energy, the one input which makes everything cost more because green energy costs much more than conventional energy from coal, oil, and natural gas.
Add trillion$ in COVID stimulus chasing too few goods and it's a recipe for the disaster which is ongoing, not moderating.
Some people get it. Most don't.
It all sounds very persuasive, as long as you forget how inflation impoverishes the lower classes and keeps them down so that the elites can continue to milk them like slaves year after year. 4% just does it twice as fast as 2%.
The little people are an afterthought to the left.
This is the "inflation is actually good" talk you hear from lefties from time to time.
Story here.
The government's chief inflation measure, so-called core inflation which excludes food and energy (third graph), ticked down to 6% in November. Big whoop. Core inflation has now averaged 6.3% throughout 2022, and was actually slightly lower year over year for two months in the summer than it was in November.
The Fed is failing in its effort to bring inflation down, plain and simple.
Higher prices are the new normal.
Meanwhile food inflation is up 12% year over year after peaking above 13% in the summer. Under Trump food inflation was practically non-existent, but Americans have been forced to cope with it month after month for over a year now, with no end in sight.
And energy inflation year over year has been north of 13% for 21 consecutive months. Go ahead. Count 'em. Under Trump we actually had energy disinflation because his administration, unlike Biden's, enthusiastically supported fracking.
Rising food and energy costs are absolutely core, especially when they deliver a one-two punch to the gut like this.
The people hardest hit don't have a voice, however. They never do. The chattering classes are doing just fine, and all they want to talk about is nonsense. Their lot is with the profiteers from inflation, not with the bottom half of the country.
The poor get poorer.
Same as it ever was.
Puny Fed rate hikes have done nothing to stop it.
The metric was less than 2% under Trump.
It's a small point, but the stock market cheerleaders, who are ubiquitous, consistently report year over year inflation as 7.7% when it's 7.8%.
Nothing must get in the way of the narrative, especially convention.
Meanwhile, the inflation regime is a giant wealth transfer scheme from you to them. But student loan forgiveness was the anesthetic to make young skulls full of mush forget on Tuesday.
In his testimony yesterday, Jerome Powell said he uses a table of the last twelve months of 12-month readings of inflation. In other words, year-over-year readings.
It showed him no evidence of inflation coming down, in other words, of inflation being "transitory".
"We're exactly where we were a year ago." In other words, yep, inflation is raging. It's not transitory.
If you aren't appalled by that, I don't know what to say.
In April 2021 inflation year over year was already at the 2008-level of bad, and the Fed chair decided to wait and see if it became a "problem".
He waited a year, until Mar 2022, to begin raising the main interest rate.
I'm sure the reason is that in April 2021 he was focused on the pandemic as the number one problem. Vaccine uptake reached its crescendo that month, and Jay was praising the COVID stimulus orgy to restart the economy.
But the pandemic wasn't his job. Stable prices is his job, and he let it slide because of the extraordinary circumstances.
Now we're in a whole other big mess. Gutting the bond market is going to be life-changing for far longer than the pandemic will be.
Here's the video from yesterday with the key interchange.
This is Trump's boy, by the way.
The first Fed rate hike under Powell came in March when inflation was already way out of control, and Americans began loading up their charge cards at 18-28% interest to cope.
That's even more insane to me than the inflation.
The main Fed interest rate is still at 3.08% today, the rate available only to the banks, the same guys who pay you 0% interest, with inflation just cruising along up there above 8%.
It took the Fed over a year to move. A year. And then by just 0.75 points at a time, which the stock market parasites screamed bloody murder about.
Pretty amazing to me that ordinary folks aren't screaming, aren't mad as hell, and seem to be prepared to just swallow and take it some more.
I guess the fight has been bred out of the American people.
Sad!
The Fed is all talk about combating inflation, no action.
Because the top 10% of the country has 89% of the money that way, dummy.
True populism would throw the bums out and end The Fed, but we haven't got any.
It causes cognitive dissonance. Zero increase to the index, zero percent inflation!
See how easy that is?
Shouldn't they be able to understand Rush Limbaugh style math by now when they hear it from the president himself? Or was the Rush Limbaugh Show all for nothing?
Sad!
The stock market is liking Fed rate hikes this year, unlike in the past
Arbitrage.
This year's drinking word.
DFF: 1.58%.
CPIAUCNS: 9.1%.
Hey, watch me borrow cheap, buy a trailer park, and raise the rents and fees on little old ladies on Social Security.
We're goin' to Vegas, baby!
