Core inflation in Mar 2025 year over year is 2.64%, still ahead of the lowest reading in the last year at 2.63% in Jun 2024.
Core inflation has been sideways for a year and more, and nowhere near 2% or below as in the pre-pandemic era.
The revised 2.96% for Feb 2025 is equivalent to the 2.97% reading in Mar 2024.
That Feb spike helps explain why the 1Q2025 reading was up 3.5% from 4Q2024.
CNBC usually runs a big story on core personal consumption expenditures before 9:00 AM every month when this report comes out, but not now under Howard Lutnick.
It's a long way down to normal.
The 2022 lows got us back only to the 2000 high, and people thought it was the end of the world when all it was was a good beginning lol.
Nominal GDP in 1Q2025 is estimated at $29.9776 trillion by the BEA this morning.
$SPX closed at 5611.85 on March 31, 2025.
That yields a ratio of 187 vs. the historical mean of 81, or 131% overvalued.
Guru Focus gets similar results from the Buffett Indicator:
Shrink, shrank, shrunk.
U.S. economy shrunk 0.3% in the first quarter as Trump policy uncertainty weighed on businesses
... fueled by an unexpected rise in imports as companies and consumers sought to get ahead of the Trump tariffs ...
In neither case however did Conservatives gain enough seats to form a government.
The Conservative Pierre Poilievre loses this election to the Liberal Mark Carney.
After Liberal Justin Trudeau resigned as PM in January, Carney became Liberal Party leader and PM in March, and promptly eliminated the consumer carbon tax ahead of this election, taking away a key issue of the Conservatives.
That, and Trump's hostility toward Canada, made this election outcome a fait accompli.
This story, for example, says nothing about evading a Houthi missile.
Fighter jet slips off carrier hangar deck in Red Sea, one minor injury
And is this even the Truman?
I mean, that's an F-35 going in the drink, not the same jet.
You can't trust anybody these days apparently.
Journalists gloss over. My eyes glaze over.
So embarrassing.
Rod Dreher, world citizen.
The consensus estimate for tomorrow's core pce inflation number is 2.6% year over year in March, and 0.1% month over month. In February the actual numbers were 2.8% year over year and 0.4% month over month.
The consensus estimate for tomorrow's real GDP estimate is 0.4% vs. 2.4% actual the previous quarter. Yes, you read that right, 0.4%. GDPNow's final read on 1Q2025 out this morning is . . . -2.7%.
Yikes.
The ADP employment change will also be reported. Consensus is for +108,000 vs. +155,000 actual the previous month.
Nonfarm payrolls comes out on Friday. Consensus is for +130,000 for April vs. +228,000 actual in March.
... Trump has declared eight national emergencies in his first 100 days, more than any other president. ...
Invoking an emergency has come to mean that the president can bypass Congress, intimidate courts, and run roughshod over normal procedures, even civil liberties. And while the current number is striking, it’s not a Trumpian innovation. Presidents have become addicted to emergency powers, unlike many other countries. The U.S. Constitution says nothing about how to declare or end an emergency. This has allowed presidents to organically assume a wide range of powers. This usually happened during wartime. ...
Today, Americans are living under dozens of ongoing national emergencies, mostly tied to foreign policy like sanctions. The oldest standing one, targeting Iran, dates back to the Carter administration. Others come from the post-9/11 era, when Congress granted the executive branch sweeping new powers, all in the name of national security. Both parties have used emergency powers to serve their broader agendas. In 2022, President Joe Biden attempted to forgive student loan debt by using an emergency authority related to the COVID-19 pandemic. ...
More.
Like failing to establish a formula for the continued growth of representation, thus unwittingly concentrating power in an oligarchic Congress by default, the constitution's silence about emergencies is yet one more example of the founders' inability to imagine every which way one branch might try to exploit it, which is an increasingly pressing problem in our increasingly illiberal society.
I remember he officiated at a funeral once, and yep, he wore a blue suit.
Even when I visited him at his home he was wearing a blue suit.
More remarkably, though, on pay day once a month my boss would go to the bank, take out a wad of cash, and then pay his mortgage in cash, walk to the phone company and pay in cash, and walk to the utility company and pay in cash.
He'd also pay me in cash.
Then he'd walk to the hotel bar with his friends for the evening and pay in cash.
He paid for everything in cash, unlike this guy.
Standards have really declined.
And Elon Musk wanted this guy to be Treasury Secretary instead of Bessent, which is even funnier.
