Fox Business' broad inflation report contained an error

 Here's Megan Henney, September 29th :

An inflation measure closely watched by the Federal Reserve ticked higher in August as steep prices continue to squeeze millions of U.S. households.

The personal consumption expenditures (PCE) index showed that consumer prices rose 0.4% from the previous month, according to the Labor Department. On an annual basis, prices climbed 3.5% — up from 3.3% recorded the previous month, underscoring the challenge of taming high inflation.

She's referring to PCEPI. 

That measure isn't up from 3.3% the previous month. It's up from 3.4%, and 3.2% the month before that.

Jeff Cox at CNBC got it right, same day, as usual:

Including food and energy, headline PCE increased 0.4% on the month and 3.5% from a year ago. Headline inflation has been creeping higher in recent months after hitting 3.2% in June.

Forbes also had it right, because it actually checked the most recent data, which Fox evidently did not:

The most recent PCE price index data was released on September 29, 2023, covering the month of August. The headline August PCE inflation figure was +3.5% year over year, which was up slightly from the revised annual rate of +3.4% in July.

 

 

 

Dear Progressives,

 

Three of 9 Target store closings are in progressive shit-hole Portland OR, CNN story gives them just 4 paragraphs at the end

 Here.

Nobody wants to talk about the shit-hole progressives have made out of Portland, which first came to light nationally when the place erupted after the death of George Floyd.

The hallmark of progressive rule in Portland is that the justice system in their hands won't prosecute crimes, so the police are demoralized and now have interminable staffing problems. Who wants to arrest the same people over and over again knowing they'll just have to arrest them again over and over?

Crime has exploded :

The murder rate in Portland is 1.85 times the US rate.

The robbery rate is 2.85 times the US rate.

The assault rate is 1.8 times.

The burglary rate: 2.56 times.

The theft rate: 2.7 times. 

The motor vehicle theft rate is 5.3 times the US rate.

There are nearly 11 times the crimes per square mile overall in Portland than the national median.

US House passes 45-day government funding bill 335-91 minus Ukraine aid

 The House measure would fund government at current 2023 levels for 45 days, through Nov. 17, setting up another potential crisis if they fail to more fully fund government by then. The package was approved by the House 335-91, with most Republicans and almost all Democrats supporting.

More.

Friday night news dump: IRS contractor Charles Littlejohn, 38, charged with leaking tax records in New York Times and ProPublica incidents in 2018 and 2020

 Littlejohn, 38, provided the public official’s tax documents to an unnamed news organization, and the tax information concerning other wealthy individuals to another unidentified news organization between 2018 and 2020, prosecutors said.

In 2020, The New York Times released a bombshell report saying that it had obtained more than two decades of Trump’s tax information and that he had paid only $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017.

 

More. 

 

The story has already been scrubbed from the lineup by the weekend kids crew at CNBC.

Regular everyday normal Canadian

 

42 million in the United States have forms of sexually transmitted human papillomavirus which can cause disease

More than 42 million Americans are infected with types of HPV that cause disease. ... Most HPV infections (9 out of 10) go away by themselves within 2 years. But sometimes, HPV infections will last longer and can cause some cancers.     

 

More.     

About 70% of cancers in the oropharynx (which includes the tonsils, soft palate, and base of the tongue) are linked to human papillomavirus (HPV), a common sexually transmitted virus.

More. 

 

 

Gonorrhea cases in the United States are up 135% in 12 years

 From 301,174 cases in 2009 to 710,151 cases in 2021

Chlamydia cases in the United States are up 32% in the last 12 years

From 1,244,180 in 2009 to 1,644,416 in 2021

Syphilis cases in the United States are up every year since 2009, a whopping 294% in 12 years

 From 44,832 cases in 2009 to 176,713 in 2021

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.

 

If Trump can skip the debate so can I

 

DeSantis: Biden Is Completely Missing In Action From Leadership, Just Like Trump Not Appearing At Debate

 

 

 

Libertarianism breaks a few eggs

STUDY: Cannabis Overuse Linked To Heart Failure And Heart Attacks...

Democrats betray liberalism, become the new authoritarians

 Carl M. Cannon, here:

But the most glaring gap is between conservatives and liberals, i.e., between Republicans and Democrats. On the issue of free expression, at least, Republicans are not the authoritarian party. That distinction belongs to the Democrats, the party launched by Thomas Jefferson — the Founding Father who famously said that if he were forced to choose between “a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” ...

If Republicans’ aversion to censorship was transactional, they would have identified Democratic-friendly misinformation for removal. But they didn’t. “Regardless of the partisan slant of the content, Democrats are more likely to support the removal of content, while Republicans are more likely to oppose removing content,” the study noted.

It was Democrats who more often employed situational ethics, giving a pass to misinformation that helped their side. Most Republicans didn’t differentiate based on which way the false headline cut.

I've wanted Trump to just go away since about January 2019, Newt Gingrich since about 2012

Because it's all "just words", as Barack Obama once said.

 

Tonight Is the Most Important Moment in the GOP Primary

Newt Gingrich, NY Sun

 

If someone hits a home run with language, ideas, and/or attitude, a substantial number of disheartened and despairing anti-Trump donors may notice — and decide to write really big checks.

 

Shocking right? A politician asserting the primacy of politics.

 

Well, "the most important moment" doesn't exist. There is a long series of important moments, when the voters have their actual say in the polling booths of the individual primaries and the elections, at which point the politicians had better deliver on the words, or else.

Most of them don't, but we fall for them every time, and they know it.

But this is most certainly true:

Given all the press coverage early in Mr. DeSantis’ candidacy — and the substantial amount of money he raised — his slide has been the biggest Republican story this year.     

 

Yes, it is the biggest story because Ron DeSantis has consistently delivered on his words in Florida . . .

and the voters nationally don't give a flying fig. 

 

Newt should know better.

 

He followed up his words as a congressman during the 1980s with a Speakership in the 1990s consisting of a temporarily successful if mixed bag of policies. Which is why he, along with Mitt Romney, subsequently never made the big time. You can't run against ObamaCare by promising RomneyCare or HeritageFoundationCare instead. Donald Trump in his hubris never learned the lesson either, squandering away his political capital on overturning it in 2017.

The majority of Republicans now remain content with the feckless entertainer who mouths "just words". They have no appetite for the humdrum of an executive who actually delivers and executes real, lasting reform.

 

This remains a not serious country, ridiculously adolescent to the end. 

It turns out that former S&P Sovereign Ratings Committee Chair John B. Chambers, who presided over the AAA downgrade in 2011, is a partisan wackadoodle

 Here commenting about today:

“The external position is about the same, but I think the governance has weakened and the fractiousness of the political settings is much worse, and that has led to government shutdowns, it’s led to fears that the government might default on its debt because of the debt ceiling, and it’s led to a failed coup d’état on the 6th [of] January, 2021.”

And here a couple years ago:

"I don’t think the chance of a default because of a debt ceiling is that high as long as the Democrats control both Congress and the White House, that won’t always been the case. That could reemerge."

 Because, this:

The Wall Street bean counter who trashed America’s global credit reputation is a New Yorker who never studied economics, majored in literature and philosophy, and has a master’s in English lit. ...

Chambers grew up outside Kansas City, Kan., and went to liberal Grinnell College in Iowa, where he was a star on the swim team, ranking eighth in school history in the 1,000-meter freestyle. After graduating in 1977 with a bachelor of arts in literature and philosophy, he went Ivy League, enrolling at Columbia University, where he got a master’s degree in English literature.  ...

S&P was found to have made an estimated $2 trillion error in its 10-year deficit projection but brushed that aside, citing instability in Washington and the fact that the deficit-reduction cuts fell short of S&P’s recommended $4 trillion.

LOL, in article supposedly touting the Cornel West threat, clueless former Green Party candidate Ralph Nader says he prefers Biden autocracy to Trump fascism

 “I know the difference between fascism and autocracy, and I’ll take autocracy any time,” Nader said, according to the outlet. “Fascism is what the GOP is the architecture of, and autocracy is what the Democrats are practitioners of. But autocracy leaves an opening. They don’t suppress votes. They don’t suppress free speech.”

Yeah, every censored, canceled person in America agrees with that, right?

If Ralph Nader is West's friend, who are West's enemies?

The whole farcical thing is here, pretending Biden doesn't now have a record, that he won the House in 2022, and that inflation isn't crushing the worker.

Dramatic price action today for 30+ years old Vanguard Treasury funds

VFISX inception date 10/28/1991 New all time low price set today 09/26/2023 close : $9.71

VFITX inception date 10/28/1991 All time low price: $9.57 on 11/21/1994 Price 9/26/2023 close: $9.59

VUSTX inception date 5/19/1986 New all time low price set today 9/26/2023 close: $7.88 

  

 

Senator Menendez starts the week telling an amusing anecdote about all that cash found in his home, doesn't explain how the briber's DNA got on the envelope

 Sen. Bob Menendez suggests cash found in bribery raid came from ‘personal savings’

 

US Treasury yields pushed to new cycle highs last week despite another Fed interest rate pause

 Cash was about the only thing which did better week over week on Friday. Treasuries and bonds generally took a beating, as did stocks.

The UST yield curve aggregate closed up a net 1.27% week over week on 9/22, to an average of 5.0707692, the highest Friday close yet for this cycle.

Yields in the aggregate made a new high for this cycle on Thursday, for an average of 5.0915384. 

Here's the year-to-date performance for key categories using some commonly used Vanguard funds:

Treasury Market VFISX 0.66% VFITX -0.70% VUSTX -5.57%;

Investment Grade Market VFSTX 2.08% VFICX 1.32% VWESX -0.83%; 

Total Bond Market VBTLX -0.03% (+0.44% previous week);

Cash VMFXX 3.58% (3.48% previous week);

Total Stock Market VTSAX 12.95% (16.45% previous week).