The ingredients in the data below come from the Gold Medal Flour Best-Ever Banana Bread recipe printed on the package, minus the (small amounts of):
vanilla (1 teaspoon), baking soda (1 teaspoon), salt (1 teaspoon), and the nuts (1 cup, optional anyway), for which I do not have the data.
Soaring coffee prices rewrite daily routines...
... Coffee prices in the U.S. were up 18.3% in January from a year ago, according to the latest Consumer Price Index released on Friday. Over five years, the government reported, coffee prices rose 47%. ...
100% ground beef hit a new all time high average price of $6.752/lb in Jan 2026.
A basket of bacon and eggs, whole wheat bread and butter, coffee and whole milk, and orange juice cost on average $32.47 in the United States in 3Q2024. Stretched out over a week, your breakfast cost you $4.64 a day.
That same basket in Jan 2026 is now $35.00 on average, up $2.53 or 7.8%.
Stretched out over a week breakfast now costs $5.00 a day.
Meanwhile OJ hit a new high, and despite removing some coffee-related tariffs, coffee hit a new record high price in Jan 2026, too.
The average yoy rate for eleven months of 2025 was 2.91%.
Average prices per unit of energy in 3Q2024 vs. Jan 2026:
Gasoline $3.496 vs. 2.961 (down 15.3%)
Natural Gas 1.403 vs. 1.704 (up 21.5%)
Electricity 0.178 vs. 0.192 (a new record high, up 7.9%)
Total 5.077 vs. 4.857 (down 4.3%)
Worries about softening employment have been entirely misplaced. Jobless claims have been FLAT for four consecutive years.
The Fed was wrong about jobs, just like it was wrong about inflation being transitory.
One path to U.S. fiscal disaster is most alarming — and most likely
... An Everest of debt is an incentive for an inflation crisis to reduce the value of existing debt by paying lenders with debased dollars. But inflation would become baked into the expectations of investors, who would demand higher interest rates. Then R>G would bite: When interest rates paid on debt exceed the rate of economic growth, a crisis intensifies as rising interest rates depress economic growth. ... The most probable, and most ominous, outcome would be a gradual crisis. ... Nothing unsettles a middle-class nation more rapidly than inflation, a component of all of these crises. ...
Seen here:
... The two revolutions had nothing whatsoever to do with one another ...
They had more to do with one another than not.
Louis XVI unwisely spent literally billions of dollars he did not have supporting the American revolution. His motivation for support was revenge against Britain. Most of it was piled up as high interest debt which the rich of the French aristocracy and of the Church refused to pay but the peasantry could not. Add famine into the mix after trying to squeeze blood out of that turnip and boom.
Donald Trump is spending $75 billion we don't have to round up illegal aliens in the streets using militarized police, but he refuses to punish the employers who get rich off their labor. He got elected promising to cut food and energy costs but here we are one year later and those things still cost a fortune.
Two Americans have been murdered in the streets by government agents.
You can see where this could go, but American Greatness can't.
2025: 3.26%
2024: 2.86%
2023: 2.89%
Way to go, Brownie!
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| 2025 |
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| 2H2025 |
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| December 2025 |
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| You talkin' to me? |
This higher inflation level, measured on a year over year basis, has persisted for 19-months from April 2024. We're just going sideways, not coming down.
Next we'll hear from Trump that this is the new normal and that higher inflation is good akshully.
No, the Fed started cutting in September 2024 in error, obviously, and Trump wants the Fed to cut some more.
Meanwhile Jeff Cox for CNBC is just phoning in the story:
Fed’s main gauge shows inflation at 2.8% in November, edging further away from target
... The personal savings rate rose in November to 3.5%, down 0.2 percentage point from the prior month. ...
How does the personal saving rate rise when it's down 0.2, Jeff?
Yes, the personal saving rate fell from 3.7% the prior month to 3.5% in November.
People are paying for higher prices at the expense of saving.
CNN poll finds majority of Americans say Trump is focused on the wrong priorities
... Most, 64%, say he hasn’t gone far enough in trying to reduce the price of everyday goods. ... Only one-third of Americans now say they believe that Trump cares about people like them, down from 40% last March and the worst rating of his political career. ...
Like many other such graphs, the graph for 100% Ground Beef won't show the 2025 average because the government shutdown meant no figure for October in the data.
The average $6.089 in 2025 is for eleven months without October, with October obviously a high figure, too, which means the annual average is no doubt higher than $6.089.
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| food at home inflation 2.4% yoy |
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| food inflation 3.1% yoy |
