Tag Archives: inflation

Post-June FOMC: By Overreacting Hawkishly, the Fed Risks Being Behind the Ball by Preston Mui employ america org The simple fact as seen in a longer-run view, inflation has fallen greatly. Whether you start from its peak at 5.6% in February 2022 or 4.2% when the Fed raised rates to the current level, core PCE inflation—which is on track to deliver a 2.6% year-on-year read for May 2024—is most of the way back to 2%. The inflation...

The media and a good chunk of the policy wonks are surprised that Biden does not get the deserved recognition for the relatively good state of the US economy, and that as a result he is suffering in the polls. There are two separate, but interrelated, causes for that. The most obvious can be defined in one word, inflation. The second, is related to the fact that, even though the recovery from the pandemic was fast, the economic situation for most working class people has not been great for a...

Corporate profits have received much more scrutiny in recent years. High inflation provoked on-going debates about the role of profit margins with terms like “greedflation” and “price gouging” levelled at corporations. People recognized that, at minimum, corporations are profiting from inflation. Analysis of 4,550 publicly-listed corporations found that 33% had record operating profits in 2021 or 2022.[1] Further, corporations with pricing power were found to be actively worsening...

 – by New Deal democrat Yesterday I discussed how virtually the entire issue of inflation remaining above the Fed’s target was the housing sector. Let me start today’s post where I left off yesterday: namely, that the net level of divergence between total headline inflation and shelter inflation of 1.15% is one of the highest such divergences in history, and the longest such big divergence. Here again is the graph: Today I want to discuss...

Inflation Is Scrambling Americans’ Perceptions of Middle-Class Life, businessinsider.com, Jennifer Sor Yes, we have inflation. It is a given. Inflation is scrambling the lives of middle-class Americans. Income is not keeping up with the costs of maintaining a Middle-Class Life. I have sat here in AZ watching this play out in the nation. In many cases we are fighting a supply chain shortage which is entirely controllable in the US. Similar happened...

– by New Deal democrat The Bonddad Blog Personal income and spending has become one of the two most important monthly reports I follow. This is in large part because the big question this year is whether the contractionary effects of Fed tightening have just been delayed until this year, or whether the fact that there have been no rate hikes since last summer mean that the expansion will strengthen. Because real personal spending on services...

[embedded content] A seminar organized by the Association for Heterodox Economics with myself, Ramiro Álvarez and the Argentine Senator Carolina Moisés.

Consumer Price Index – March 2024 (bls.gov) “The BLS index for shelter rose in March, as did the index for gasoline. Combined, these two indexescontributed over half of the monthly increase in the index for all items. The energy index rose 1.1percent over the month. The food index rose 0.1 percent in March. The food at home index wasunchanged, while the food away from home index rose 0.3 percent over the month. Good reads on the March BLS...

Employ America’s current corecast is for a 2.86% YoY core PCE print for February. The six-month growth rate of core PCE, which was under 2% in December, should now be over 3% in February. Core services ex-housing inflation will be up on a year-on-year basis versus the previous meeting. Many FOMC members, especially among the moderates in the committee (Daly, Mester, Powell, Waller) have expressed a willingness to look through a hot January...

Center for Economic Development and Policy Research, CEPR Dean Baker When we hear about inflation most of us probably think of items like food, gas, and rent, but when it comes to the Consumer Price Index (CPI), the most frequently cited measure of inflation, auto insurance has played a very large role in recent years. The index for motor vehicle insurance rose 0.9 percent in July. It was responsible for 0.024 percentage points of the 0.4...