The Consumer Price Index for January 2017 rose 2.5%, pulled upward by its energy component which thanks to oil prices now being comparing to the absolutely lows last year saw that part of the index rise 11.1% year-over-year. Given that oil prices bottomed out on February 11, 2016, this is the last month where oil prices and thus energy inflation [...]
The Bank of Japan raised its growth outlook, keeping monetary policy unchanged at its latest meeting. In the latest to be swept up in “reflation”, Japan’s central bank even trumpeted (pardon the pun) the expected Trump “stimulus” as a reason to be more optimistic. Why wouldn’t they? After all, there is no place on Earth that more appreciates government spending [...]
For the first time since 2014, the CPI was above 2% in December. Unlike the PCE Deflator, the CPI has been above 2% on other occasions after the 2012 slowdown, notably in mid-2014 when policymakers were making the same extrapolations as to its meaning. The inflation index had been as high as 2.13% in May 2014, before the economy of [...]
For the 55th consecutive month, the PCE Deflator came in under the 2% inflation target for the Federal Reserve’s inflation mandate. The Bureau of Economic Analysis reported last week that inflation in November 2016 actually decelerated slightly from its meandering pace set more by oil price base effects than $4.5 trillion on the Fed’s balance sheet. Year-over-year the PCE Deflator [...]
The CPI continued its meandering in November, increasing 1.69% year-over-year in a very slight acceleration to October’s 1.64% gain. As oil and energy prices this year are compared to the worst levels last year, the CPI is brought back up not to what it would look like in an actually robust growth period but rather what it was in the [...]
There has to this point been one key element missing from “reflation.” Or maybe it hasn’t been missing, it just hasn’t been consistent with what I would consider that term to mean. The WTI price remains quite range-bound even though there is at the moment only wind at its back. OPEC had just pledged less production, and though US production [...]
Nominal personal spending grew by just over 4% in October 2016, a number that sounds impressive by virtue of what we have become used to in this economy. That was much less than the 5.2% in spending growth from the middle of 2014 just prior to the effects of the “rising dollar”, which was itself a low point for a [...]
Consumer prices accelerated again in October 2016, with the overall CPI calculating a 1.64% inflation rate. That is up from 1.46% in September, and the highest since October 2014. The reason is energy prices. For the first time in over two years, the energy component of the CPI was positive year-over-year. Having been as low as -20% in early 2015, [...]
As if anyone needed any proof as to why economics needs to be so thoroughly debunked, it was on display again today. I am talking about Rome over Carthage defeat, where the textbooks of Economics (capital “E”) should be so salted and devastated in the same manner in which the Romans banished the Carthaginians forever to nothing but history. Economics [...]
Just over a week ago, the world (at least in chemistry) celebrated Mole Day. Rather than acknowledge the small underground mammal that immediately springs to mind, Mole Day is in honor of Amadeo Avogadro, the Count of Quaregna and Cerreto, who lived in the late 18th and early 19th centuries and contributed one of the major international base units in [...]
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