Monday, August 18, 2025
Sunday, August 17, 2025
Saturday, August 16, 2025
Frozen orange juice concentrate, coffee, bananas, and chocolate chip cookies also made new record high average prices in July 2025
Frozen orange juice concentrate $4.641/12oz
Coffee $8.414/lb
Bananas $0.657
Chocolate Chip cookies $5.264
Even though bananas and chocolate chip cookies made new highs, they are good values adjusted for inflation since 1980. Bananas are 49% lower than they should be, and the cookies are 12% lower. Most US bananas come from Guatemala, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Colombia, and Honduras.
Coffee is running 3.9% ahead of its inflation adjusted price from July 1984, and OJ is running 3.4% ahead of its inflation adjusted price since July 1980.
All nearly fifty food items I track are still near their all time highs.
We've had no fewer than seven spikes of serious food inflation running ahead of core inflation just since the year 2000.
Agricultural export prices also have soared since then. What a coincidence.
All eight beef prices I track made new record average highs in July 2025
Adjusted for inflation since July 1984, 100% ground beef should cost $3.88/lb in July 2025, but it's actually 61% higher than that.
100% Ground Beef $6.254/lb
Ground Chuck 6.338
Round Roast 7.909
All uncooked beef roasts 8.397
Choice chuck roast 8.439
Round steak 8.69
All uncooked beef steaks 11.875
Choice sirloin steak 13.554
Friday, August 15, 2025
Thursday, August 14, 2025
My God, that sentence
 |
| https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/08/13/nasa-perseverance-rock-helmet-photo/85649312007/ |
At least Santelli told the truth
... We’re a couple seconds away, folks, from our July release of the Producer Price Index.
Headline number is– WHOPPINGLY big! Oh my goodness!
Up 9 tenths of a percent. Up 9 tenths. And if you strip out food and energy, guess what? It’s still up 9/10ths. Boy, that equals June of 22! ...
More.
Forecasters YUGELY underestimated July producer price increases, aka wholesale prices, forecasting +0.2% month over month, getting +0.9% instead lol
Hey, they're only off by a factor of 4.5x.
Low inflation expectations based on June were clobbered by the facts, but to hell with the facts. $SPX is down only 0.07% at this hour.
The market cheerleaders desperately cling to the belief that the Fed must lower interest rates in September. When the numbers come in 0.1 below expectations, they go wild and drive up stocks like madmen believing they must be right. When the forecast misses like this they just hold.
On a year over year basis, the forecast was for +2.5% for overall wholesale prices, but they got +3.3% instead, seasonally adjusted.
For core wholesale prices the consensus forecast was for +2.9% year over year, but they got +3.7% instead, again seasonally adjusted.
Wholesale prices rose 0.9% in July, much more than expected
Wholesale prices rose far more than expected in July, providing a potential sign that inflation is still a threat to the U.S. economy, a Bureau of Labor Statistics report Thursday showed.
The producer price index, which measures final demand goods and services prices, jumped 0.9% on the month, compared with the Dow Jones estimate for a 0.2% gain. It was the biggest monthly increase since June 2022.
Excluding food and energy prices, core PPI rose 0.9% against the forecast for 0.3%. Excluding food, energy and trade services, the index was up 0.6%, the biggest gain since March 2022. ...
It's not a potential sign of inflation, you idiots. It's a real sign.
The year over year numbers, not seasonally adjusted, for core wholesale price increases in the July report are oddly unchanged from the June report in no respect, for the increases since October 2024. In fact, the figures are exactly the same to five decimal places. It's like everybody went on vacation and just copied and pasted and went to the beach:
Nov 2024: 3.35987
Dec 2024: 3.74962
Jan 2025: 3.92532
Feb 2025: 3.73239
Mar 2025: 3.78846
Apr 2025: 3.07652
May 2025: 3.21542
Jun 2025: 2.62853
and Jul 2025: 3.65568.
The average of these Nov thru May is 3.54965. July looks like that, but June sure the hell still does not.
I smell a rat.
Meanwhile . . .
Core cpi inflation yoy averaged 2.9% in the first half of 2025, but 3.1% in July.
Core pce inflation yoy averaged 2.8% in the first half of 2025 (July numbers come Aug 29th).
But core wholesale prices were up 3.4% in the first half on average, and 3.7% in July according to today's report.
How long can producers not pass that along? Or do we have a broader issue here with trustworthy numbers, because Mad King Ludwig is in charge?
Trump the fool one year ago: We will slash electricity prices by half within twelve months, eighteen months max
Electricity will be ten cents again when pigs fly.
“Under my administration, we will be slashing energy and electricity prices by half within 12 months, at a maximum 18 months,” he told an audience in North Carolina in August 2024.
Quoted here.
Wednesday, August 13, 2025
Elon Musk's phony Doge spending cut math was basically like positing there was a $20,000 credit limit when there wasn't, canceling it and then saying, ‘I’ve just saved $20,000'
... DOGE’s savings calculations are based on faulty math. The group uses the maximum spending possible under each contract as its baseline — meaning all money an agency could spend in future fiscal years. That amount can far exceed what the government has actually committed to pay out.
Counting this “ceiling value” gives a false picture of savings for taxpayers.
“That’s the equivalent of basically taking out a credit card with a $20,000 credit limit, canceling it and then saying, ‘I’ve just saved $20,000,’” said Jessica Tillipman, associate dean for government procurement law studies at George Washington University Law School. “Anything that’s been said publicly about [DOGE’s] savings is meaningless.” ...
Peak drinking in 1977 coincides with peak Baby Boom turning 20 lol, now a record low 54% drink in 2025
1958 was a close second place drinking low year at 55% as their parents realized "My God, what have we done?" ha ha ha.
Seriously now, 71% drank in 1976, 1977, and 1978, the Baby Boom Bender.
Prior to 1984, many states like Wisconsin had lowered the drinking age to 18 from 21 because the voting age had been changed to 18 in 1971 by the 26th Amendment.
The National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 turned this back the other way again by withholding federal highway funds from states that did not raise their drinking age back to 21, which Wisconsin finally did in 1986. Wisconsin had a tiered system between 1984 and 1986 where the drinking age was 19 for beer and wine and 21 for liquor.
Gallup reports here:
... The highs of 68% to 71% were all recorded between 1974 and 1981. ...
This anthem made its debut in 1985:
American Enterprise Institute's Stan Veuger: Trump's pick for BLS isn't qualified
... “The
hope was that he would pick someone . . . who people would have trust
in and could lead the BLS in an appropriate way, with relevant
experience and, ideally, not hyper-partisan,” said Stan Veuger, senior
fellow at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute think-tank.
“EJ Antoni is really the opposite of that.”
“Even the people who may be somewhat sympathetic to his economic policy views don’t think he’s qualified,” added Veuger. ...
More.
OMG the dumbest line in this story: people who buy trucks often use them to haul things
Well no shit, Sherlock.
The Electric Pickup Truck Boom Turned Into a Big Bust
... many electric versions just aren’t up for the task. ...
Pickup sales, first half of 2025:
EVs 35,000
Internal Combustion: 1,600,000
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