... Couponing, comparison shopping and cutting back on favorite foods are new habits for Apral Jack and millions of other Americans as they absorb the biggest jump in grocery prices in a half-century. Buying food to eat at home has gotten 33% more expensive in U.S. cities since the beginning of 2019, according to government figures. In the 7 1/2 years before that, prices rose 6.4%. ...
More.
More than half of the 17 offenders are beef products.
In addition to the 9 beef products, also appearing are beer, wine, chocolate chip cookies, lettuce, tomatoes, white rice, coffee, and orange juice.
Most of the 46 foods tracked are priced near, if not at, their all-time highs in 1H2026, but inflation over time matters when evaluating what's what.
Fresh whole chicken, for example, remains a good value compared with beef.
100% ground beef purchased in the summer of 1984 for $1.31 per pound should cost about $4.22 per pound today, but in reality is about $6.78 on an average basis. You are paying a premium of 61% over inflation when you eat hamburger today.
One whole chicken, however, purchased at an average price of 66-cents per pound in the summer of 1980 should cost about $2.67 per pound today adjusted for inflation, but is only about $2.04. A year ago it was $2.06.
Smart shoppers choose the fricken chicken.
The Fed has met its goal of keeping inflation below 2% in only eleven of the last sixty years, which I'm sure was just an accident.
Why did the squirrel cross the road?
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| June 2026 |
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| 2Q2026 |
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| 1H2026 |
Core cpi inflation in June 2026 fell to 2.59% year over year, but rose to 2.73% for the second quarter.
For the first half of 2026 core cpi inflation fell to 2.62%.
The measure averaged 1.96% annually in Trump's first term.
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| June 2026 |
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| 2Q2026 |
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| 1H2026 |
This country eats, drinks, and sleeps inflation in the post-war . . . at 3.4% since 1948.
It's the cover for the haves to rob the have-nots. The Fed's job is to keep it going, just at a lower level than the 4.4% of the last six years, while telling you that they work for you when they actually work for the banks and the corporations.
From 1871 to 1948 the inflation rate was 0.8%, for most of which time we had sound money . . . until they confiscated it in 1934.
The only true words below are "We don't know".
Warsh promises inflation will be a ‘thing of the past,’ cites benefits of AI investment boom
... "if we get policy right — and we will — the inflation surge of the last five years will be a thing of the past."
... "While monthly price fluctuations are inevitable — especially in an unsettled world — underlying inflation over longer time horizons is determined largely by monetary policy," he said.
... "We don’t know the extent to which the economy will benefit from the AI buildout," he added. "Yet it seems inevitable that what is now called ‘AI investment’ will soon be called just ‘investment.’"
Warsh previously has said he expects an AI productivity boom will prove disinflationary — a premise challenged by some economists as well as his fellow Fed policymakers. ...
Gee, I hope it's not this disinflationary:
What in the Sam Hell is golden about this age?
Absolutely nothing.
There's nothing Greenspan about it either.
Alan Greenspan's core pce inflation averaged 2.46% year over year 1987-2006.
PCEPILFE fell to 2.23% yoy in 1994 and as low as 1.27% by 1998 even as the Fed Funds Effective Rate (DFF) averaged 5.49% for four years 1995-1998.
Greenspan's observed "irrational exuberance" in stocks certainly wasn't caused by low interest rate policy. By today's standards his policy was hawkish even as the market formed a bubble.
His career core pce inflation performance averaged 2.46% yoy.
It is difficult to imagine today's world being at all patient enough to tolerate Alan Greenspan, especially the Alan Greenspan of 1987-1990 when DFF averaged 7.89%.
He would be run out of town like Ben Bernanke and Jerome Powell, neither of whom arguably were in office long enough to really judge fairly by comparison with Alan Greenspan and both of whom were shabbily treated by Obama and Trump.
Greenspan had the main ideas right:
Low inflation over full employment, because inflation is the worst tax on the people;
And broad property ownership as the foundation supporting the American economy and securing the consent of the governed.
During his nearly 20-year tenure, the Federal Funds Effective Rate averaged 4.87%.
This is a really good look at Greenspan's career from Marty Steinberg at CNBC. It is one of the best reads I've had at CNBC in a long time.
Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Fed, dies at age 100
... Throughout, he focused on fighting inflation over promoting full employment. His supporters say he presided over the longest economic expansion in U.S. history, but critics said Greenspan’s low interest rate policies set the stage for the housing bubble that burst into the Great Recession a year after his successor, Ben Bernanke, took the Fed helm.
... in his best-selling memoir “The Age of Turbulence,” he defended the low-rate policy, which encouraged people to buy homes: “I believed then, as now, that the benefits of broadened homeownership are worth the risk. Protection of property rights, so critical to a market economy, requires a critical mass of owners to sustain political support.” ...
Wholesale prices rose 1.1% in May, more than expected, on surge in energy
The producer price index increased a seasonally adjusted 1.1% in May, putting the 12-month wholesale inflation rate at 6.5%, the highest since November 2022.
Excluding food and energy, the so-called core PPI accelerated 0.4%, compared with the consensus view of 0.5%, indicating that rising fuel prices are causing much of the inflationary burden.
Wholesale prices are frequently revised significantly from month to month but that is seldom followed-up.
According to this report, core wholesale prices increased last month at a somewhat less fearsome rate, and this month is about the same as that revision.
Should I get excited when it's not 5.2% when it's still pretty awful?
I still expect increases in energy costs to act as a screen for producers to increase prices more than warranted in order to realize higher profits.
My latest lube, oil, and filter cost me $83, $30 of which was labor. The specific oil used retails for $7.99/quart. My discount was $0.24/quart lol.
But in 2021 the very same oil retailed for $3.99/quart.
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| core nsa |
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| total index nsa |
Because he doesn't have a clue what he's talking about.
Why do they always seem to do the opposite of what they promise?
Commenters may like to draw a sharp distinction between overall and core and point to core as evidence that this is not so bad, but the thing is, both overall and core measures have been steadily rising since February.
Overall cpi inflation which includes food and energy bleeds into core eventually, because energy inflation drives up the cost of everything.
This is ugly and getting uglier.
The president has scored an own goal opening the Iran war without a plan to keep the oil flowing.
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| core not seasonally adjusted |
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| core seasonally adjusted |
Bessent: Inflation jump will be 'short-term blip'...
Core inflation has been rattling around 3% or higher for nearly five consecutive years as our betters fail to get inflation down to their 2% goal.
I say their goal because 0% is the goal in the law.
Goals are real nice, aren't they?
They, too, are meaningless. They are tricks to persuade you that our elected officials are serious people who agree with you while they have no intention of doing what they say they will do.
"Well I'm really sorry, Mr. Smith. We tried really hard to get inflation down but we had all these unexpected events ruin our best efforts."
In 1Q2026 core inflation rose, to 3.11%, and under current circumstances no one thinks 2Q is going to be lower, which will make it five full years of this and headed the wrong way again.
One good blip deserves another, I guess.
The Treasury Secretary is not serious about inflation, and just about everyone points to Scott Bessent as the serious person in this administration.
We are so screwed.
The word "tariff" does not appear in this column lol.
... But the bad polling trends for Republicans and Trump generally started late last year, before the attack on Iran. The right-track-wrong track numbers started souring last May.
It’s reasonable then to suspect that Trump’s other problems — including stubborn inflation (aside from gas prices) and his family’s sketchy business dealings — are harming the GOP. This pre-Iran trend also suggests that the numbers won’t simply reverse if the Strait of Hormuz reopens and gas prices fall.
The Republican Party’s problem is deeper than gas prices, and so things won’t get better before November. The only question is whether things get worse.
SPX +10.52% ytd
WTI +53.11% ytd
Meanwhile in April:
Hamburger +18.9% yoy
Coffee +29.0% yoy
Unleaded regular gasoline +28.0% yoy
Electricity +7.2% yoy
Natural gas +3.1% yoy
[Trump 9/21/2024: "We will cut your energy prices in half. Mark it down . . . within 12 months . . ."]
Milk +1.5% yoy
Whole Chicken -1.6% yoy
Eggs -56.1% yoy
Tomatoes +50.0% yoy
And:
30-year mortgage average monthly, above 6% since August 2022
Full time jobs above 50% of population just 6 of the last 25 quarters, all under Joe Biden
