It is costing more to live and be, so naturally people are looking for who it is they need to blame. Maybe figure out some way to stop it. You know and feel for the basics since everyone’s perceptions begin with costs of just living. This is what makes the subject of inflation so difficult, even more so in the [...]
Central banks and their staffs have long been accused of trying to hide inflation. This allegation had been a staple of their critics, those charging reckless monetary policies for creating “too much” money that had allegedly been causing price imbalances all over the financial map. The most famous example the Federal Reserve discontinuing M3 early in 2006 – just as [...]
The Fed meets this week and is widely expected to say that it is talking about maybe reducing bond purchases sometime later this year or maybe next year or at least, someday. Jerome Powell will hold a press conference at which he'll tell us that markets have nothing to worry about because even if they taper QE, interest rates aren't [...]
January 2021 was, it may have seemed, only the start of something big. Huge. Colossal. Coronavirus vaccines had been discovered, publicized, and rolled out, meaning for the first time a real shot at ending the pandemic. The world could quickly get back to normal, the economy recovering its footing, and between January and that bright future Uncle Sam was going [...]
The inflation hysteria striking the US just hasn’t caught on elsewhere. China is a perfect example of resisting the strain. According to new figures from the Chinese government, consumer price inflation had retreated again during August 2021. The year-over-year change for their CPI was just 0.8%. This was the lowest since March, the fourth straight month of decelerating price changes.China’s [...]
Slowdown, yes, but by how much? The inflation argument has been forced to change yet again after having been put together by expectations for a “red hot” economy to stay red hot for a prolonged period. That’s no longer in the data, as even the most robust of indications – such as sentiment – have clearly cooled off. What’s left, [...]
Being able to compare European inflation rates with their American counterparts helps expose what’s driving the latter and it’s not inflationary currency. Comparing both of those inflation regimes with the Japanese simply exposes the Bank of Japan and QE. This was perfectly obvious before the Base 2020 CPI estimates came about.Central banks, we’re always told, possess the printing press of [...]
Europe’s statistical agency Eurostat reported today that its preliminary inflation estimates released earlier for the month of July 2021 had come out correct. Those first guesses had put the year-over-year change in the overall HICP at 2.2%, and its core rate one of the lowest at 0.7%. With more completed survey data and more time to recheck the statistics, confirming [...]
Fitting, in a way, that with so much having come out this week, the 10-year Treasury yield would end it at almost exactly the same price/yield as it began. In between, another epic CPI, ’74-style PPI commodities, and now rounding out the BLS inflation trifecta today was the fourth straight double-digit gain (year-over-year) in import prices. To the latter, the [...]
For the first time in a couple of months, only a couple of months, no one will be able to say that inflation rates are the highest in…a very long time. According to the BLS and its latest CPI estimates for the month of July 2021, consumer prices are still well higher than they had been during July 2020 but [...]
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