Core pce inflation still 2.8% in March 2024, still 75% worse than under Trump for a second consecutive month

 Biden's 1Q2024 average is 2.86% year over year, making thirteen quarters averaging 4.20% average yoy inflation vs. Trump's 1.6%, 163% worse.

Trump never had a single quarter higher than 1.97% yoy.

Core pce inflation was 2.8% year over year in February 2024, but averaged just 1.6% for four years under Donald Trump

The core pce inflation rate currently is still 75% worse than Trump's 1.6%.

The three year Biden average is 4.31%, which is 169% worse than under Trump.

Real Clear Politics currently shows an average of 64.6% saying the country is on the wrong track.

 

Core inflation measure for January 2024 is . . . not good

 Year over year we're still at 2.8%, still well above 2.0.

The monthly pop of .4% is high relative to anything in the last year.

The .5 change in the index was . . . pretty dang big.

The drive by media always spins this as "expected" when consensus estimates are confirmed, but that doesn't make them good.

 

Core pce inflation, which excludes food and energy measures, is still high at 3.5% year over year in October 2023, down 0.2 points from September or 5.4%

 Price increases at 3.5% instead of 3.7% year over year. This level remains outside of most people's experience since the late 1990s.

The broad measure fell to 3.0% from 3.4%. The energy goods and services component yoy has been negative, that is deflationary, for eight months in a row. The food component was up 2.0% year over year in October but is now in its tenth month of declines out of twelve on a year over year measure monthly.

Declining energy input costs have been the story behind declining inflation measures overall, primarily natural gas which is twice as important to the U.S. economy as gasoline on a BTU basis.

The Biden administration's green energy policy is at war with the reason for the happy circumstance of declining inflation measures it finds itself in, and Biden could be sailing to re-election if he were instead supporting fossil fuel production, which would slay the inflation dragon dead.

Core pce inflation at 3.7% yoy in September 2023: Two years and five months in excess of 3%

 Overall pce inflation has been stuck at 3.4% yoy for three months running as of Sep 2023, which indicates to me the Fed will at the very least keep rates where they are, or possibly raise them again as progress has stalled.

 

overall

core

 

The three year and five month embarrassment of core inflation higher than the 10-year Treasury yield finally ended in August

 Yield for the 10-year US Treasury rose to an average 4.17% in August 2023 while core inflation year over year fell to 3.87% in August 2023.

This ends the 3-year 5-month run where core inflation exceeded the 10-year yield, something which has never happened in the data.

The only time core inflation outran the 10-year previously for a comparable period was in 1974 and 1975 when core inflation averaged 7.91% and 8.35% vs. the 10-year yield which averaged 7.56% and 7.99% respectively.

That lackadaisical response to inflation by the Federal Reserve under Arthur F. Burns (1970-1978) prefigured the 1980 resurgence of core inflation to 9.19%. Under his successor Paul Volcker, interest rates were hiked to unprecedented levels to curb inflation. The 10-year yield rose to an average of 13.92% in 1981 as a result.

The current fear is that the Powell Fed has set up the economy for a repeat of this awful period of inflation.

Whatever is said about it, there is no question that inflation is a benefit to the Federal government because it depends on borrowing to finance deficit spending and consequently the debt, now at an unprecedented $33 trillion. Inflation simply reduces that cost to the government over time by making the dollars previously borrowed worth less.

It is true that new borrowing costs much more, but the debt mountain mammoth in the living room is the more pressing problem. This is why the cognoscenti teach that inflation is a good thing.

Extending the duration of inflation at the currently relatively low level has been in the government's interest. The costs born by the public in the form of higher prices for goods, services, and borrowing are becoming routinized so that the voters are becoming inured to the deleterious effects for them while clueless of the benefits for the debt mongers. 

This is particularly the case for voters who have no memory of that horrible inflation which gave rise to the backlash represented by Ronald Reagan's election in 1980, and who now vastly outnumber those who still remember.

It should not be forgotten that Jimmy Carter got elected in 1976 anyway, after the Burns' inflation. The voters then took it all in stride, too, until they didn't.

Same as it ever was.