Adjusted for inflation, March 1994 diesel for $1.10 should have cost $2.50 in July 2026, but it averaged $4.95 instead

 And we're pushing $5.50 in August.

 

Yeah, well, the reports were "benign" but the facts weren't

 This is the problem with fake economic news, which isn't meant to inform. It's meant to shape, just like fake polls.

It's disinformation, meant to blunt the bad news every time its ugly head pops up to keep stock markets from falling.

Everybody's talking the stock market book, because everything else sucks. They're afraid that speaking the truth would be all it takes to destroy confidence in the economy, when everyone who must experience the economy on the street knows it is not booming.  

What rising Treasury yields are telling us 

... The yield on the 30-year Treasury bond ended the week at 5.26%, the highest since June 2007, despite benign reports on consumer and wholesale price inflation. (This is unusual, as long-term yields tend to move lower when inflation becomes less of a worry.) ...

Core wholesale prices have been increasing at an average monthly rate of 4.24% in 2026. Peak before the pandemic was 2.99% in August 2011. 

Core consumer inflation averaged 2.62% in 1H2026. Before 2021 there wasn't a reading that high since 2H2006 at 2.72%. Twenty years ago.

The bond market isn't blind to the facts like these reporters are, who have their heads in the sand. 

Yields are rising because of persistent inflation. 

TLT and IEF in the bond drawdown news

SPR isn't the only thing in drawdown lol, down 49.5% since the beginning of 2022. Oil. Pffft. Who needs it, right?

Long term bond investors are getting killed, if any are left still standing. The article linked says most fixed income investors have gone ultra short.

Meanwhile the personal saving rate, which includes monies being socked away in retirement accounts, has plunged to 2.7% in June 2026. A prosperous people saves. Ours is doing something else. 

 

Imagine being down 6.7% per year for five years straight in the "safe" part of your portfolio, or even 1%, when inflation has been raging at 4.5% on average. Real return is far, far more negative.

Here:

... The iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF (TLT), for example, has posted an average annual return of negative 6.7% over the past five years, while its 7-10 Year Treasury Bond ETF (IEF) has posted an average annual decline of 1%. ...

 

Experts fancy bond yields are simply normalizing higher, but yields across the board have risen in response to the oil war since March

 

Inflation been berry berry good to Chico, profit margins have never been higher

 Net profits margins running at 16.9% instead of 12.4%.

These charts show why stocks keep rallying. Profit margins are the highest on record

And of course they write this headline with a straight face:

Wholesale prices were flat in July, below expectations for 0.2% increase 

I got your record corporate profits right here pal, month after month after month:

... On an annual basis, the headline PPI increased 4.7% for the all-items index and 4.2% for core, according to unadjusted figures. ...

 

  

Core wholesale price inflation rose at a 4.15% annual rate in July 2026

Prior months in today's report:

June 4.72%

May 4.43%

April 4.92%

March 3.94%

February 3.83%

January 3.71%

 

The highest average peak level during the Trump I administration was 2.60%, in 2018.

 

In July 2026 core wholesale prices rose at an annual rate almost 60% higher than the 2018 average. 

 

The average to date in 2026 is 4.24%, 63% higher. 

 

 

America is based on guns because it's also based on robbery

I mean, we stole the colonies from the king . . . in the second place amirite?

Before that we were stealing his masts. 

With no king to rob anymore, we instead rob ourselves.

 

To be a 1913 millionaire in July 2026, you'll need 33.73 of them, and a high capacity magazine.

 

July 2026 cpi inflation 3.4%

July 2026 core cpi inflation 2.5%

Shoulda saved your pennies instead of buying a house

25 years ago copper was 65-cents a pound, today it's $6.65. 

Adjusted for inflation it should be more like $1.22. Copper is up 923%.

By contrast the median sales price of houses sold in the United States is up only 140%.

Joe Biden's national policy director for his 2020 campaign is pissed off a health care CEO gets $20 million a year while the nation's employees aren't taxed on their health insurance compensation, depriving the federal government of $500 billion a year

 That's the single largest tax loss expenditure on the list of tax loss expenditures.

Adding health insurance benefits for employees was a WWII era work-around to FDR's anti-capitalist wage controls, instituted to curb inflation.

When too many were unavailable to do the work because they were off fighting the war, the price of work sky-rocketed. Adding untaxed health insurance benefits helped employers attract and keep workers during wartime.

The untaxed health insurance benefit was & remains tax-free compensation, estimated as today's single largest tax loss expenditure at $500 billion/year.

But Biden's national policy director for his 2020 campaign goes off on a $20m CEO because high compensation earners are the easy target she only pretends are the problem instead of the one you see in the mirror every morning not paying taxes on everything you make.

She needs your votes for the public option, and isn't going to get them by telling you the truth.

The public option, to be sure, would have been superior to the Obamacare Rube Goldberg machine, and is clearly preferable to Medicare For All because the latter would end employer-provided health insurance.

But as with FDR it's still not capitalism, and if you push here something is going to pop out over there and become a problem. The iron laws of supply and demand will always assert themselves, but with capitalism the consequences are immediate, severe, and self-correcting by the market.

If you tax health insurance benefits, you will simply get less health insurance of the kind we have, accompanied by more cries for options from the marketplace for the health insurance we don't have, which if free to provide them . . . will.

Meanwhile a comprehensive federal income tax reform taxing all income at high rates above $102,230 for a single filer and $136,306 for married filing jointly as of June 2026, and at 0% below, is the place to start to reimagine fairness in the United States.

84% of individual earners made less than $100,000 in 2023. The vast majority of them would not notice that an average of $9,500 of employer provided health insurance was being counted as income under the new threshold of $102,230 because they would owe zero taxes anyway. 

We need more reality in economics and less fiddling with it, and certainly none of what Abdul is selling, which will require taxing everybody, not just the rich, much more. He is selling "free at the point of care", but nothing is free. Nothing.

 

 

Core pce inflation in 1H2026 was 3.23% year over year and headed The Wong Wei

 The green line represents Fed Chair Alan Greenspan's 1987-2006 average at 2.46%.

The current rate is elevated 31% above the Greenspan average.

Core pce inflation has been above 2.46% yoy since March 2021, sixty-two consecutive months.

We are not led by serious people. 

 

 

  

The Lost World of food

... 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.

37% of 46 average food prices I track through FRED at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis made new all-time average high prices for the first half of 2026

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. 

 

 

Overall wholesale price inflation in June 2026 was still highly elevated at 5.5% yoy, May revised down to 6% from 6.5%

 CNBC found some guy to say producers won't raise prices on consumers "as much" lol.

 

Core wholesale inflation in June 2026 at 4.7% yoy is still high and rising, May revised down to 4.6% from 4.9%

 

New Fed Chair Kevin Warsh says the Fed has no tolerance for high inflation, except for 82% of the time since 1965 when it's been above 2%

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.

 

CPI energy inflation averaged 1.2% under Trump I lolol, but 15.7% in June 2026, 19.0% in 2Q2026, and 11.7% in 1H2026

 Why did the squirrel cross the road?

 

June 2026

2Q2026

1H2026

 

CPI food inflation under Trump I averaged 1.89%, but the 3.09% rate in 2Q2026 is more than 63% higher

 

2Q2026

All items inflation in 2Q2026 was 3.86%, which is elevated a whopping 103.2% above the annual average 1.90% of Trump's first term

2Q2026

 

The core cpi inflation rate in June 2026 was elevated 32% over Trump's average rate in his first term

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.

 

June 2026

2Q2026

1H2026

 

Fed Chair Kevin Warsh, whose wealth is his wife's, peddles the myth that the Fed is in control

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: