U.S. inflation surged more than expected in January, notching another four-decade high as rapid price gains wiped out the benefits of rising wages for most Americans.
Megan Henney for FOX Business:
The consumer price index rose 7.5% in January from a year ago, according to a new Labor Department report released Thursday, marking the fastest increase since February 1982, when inflation hit 7.6%. The CPI – which measures a bevy of goods ranging from gasoline and health care to groceries and rents – jumped 0.6% in the one-month period from December.
Economists expected the index to show that prices surged 7.3% in January from the previous year and 0.5% on a monthly basis.
So-called core prices, which exclude more volatile measurements of food and energy, climbed 6% in January from the previous year – a sharp increase from December, when it rose 5.5%. It was the steepest 12-month increase since August 1982.
“U.S. annual CPI is the highest since 1982, and what’s worse is that this likely isn’t the peak,” said Seema Shah, chief strategist at Principal Global Investors. “Higher-than-expected monthly gains in core CPI indicate continued underlying heat and will do nothing to relieve pressure on the Fed to tighten sharply and urgently.”
Stocks declined after the report, with tech leading the broad market selloff.
Rising inflation is eating away at strong wage gains that American workers have seen in recent months: Real average hourly earnings rose just 0.1% in January from the previous month, as the 0.6% inflation increase eroded the 0.7% total wage gain, according to the Labor Department. On an annual basis, real earnings actually declined 1.7% in January.
MacDailyNews Take: The beatings will continue until morale improves.
‘Tis best to get a handle on inflation, if you know how, while you still can. – MacDailyNews, May 11, 2021
Earlier this month, Interactive Brokers founder Thomas Peterffy said, “Inflation is 7% — 1% or 2% [in interest rate hikes] doesn’t mean anything. If they really wanted to stop inflation, they would have to raise rates to 4%, 5%, 6%.”
Inflation is repudiation. — Calvin Coolidge
When a business or an individual spends more than it makes, it goes bankrupt. When government does it, it sends you the bill. And when government does it for 40 years, the bill comes in two ways: higher taxes and inflation. Make no mistake about it, inflation is a tax and not by accident. — Ronald Reagan
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Luckily for us all, even those of you on the left side of the IQ bell curve, Tuesday November 8, 2022 is coming and we’re watching how it proceeds very, very closely:
RNC Building ‘Army’ of GOP Poll Workers After Decades-Long Court-Ordered Hiatus
Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections
Would that be an armed army of GOP poll workers? Would they also escort behind the curtain? It would be fitting.
Vlad, your adorable.
Oh Lizzie, you make Marjorie seem less stupid and evil.
Proof? Nada!
Stupid is as stupid does
Time to have a gazpacho force involved!
https://twitter.com/JJHunt10/status/1491770305995591685
Thanks Joe what a leader!
And, by the way, Biden is shitting his pants in fear, not just from decrepit old age.
Coming to America unless the Democrat authoritarians shove their vaccine and useless mask mandates up their asses and declare COVID endemic.
This whole COVID reaction has been overwrought hysteria and power trips nearly everywhere on this common sense-bereft planet.
https://twitter.com/CCryptonaire/status/1491419501984108546
Huh, why the ruffle. I like being a record breaker.
There once was a Prez with dementia
Who greets all who come with “who sent ya?”
Was this Biden, or Trump…
Oh, come don’t be a grump!
Both do have verbal differentia.
That number should be much higher because, come on man, food and energy prices have gone way up.
“U.S. inflation surged more than expected”
Here’s the propaganda the media plays, and right on time.
Because anyone with ANY economic sense knew this was going to happen.
Yes, we did know this was going to happen, because Corporate America will use any convenient scapegoat to raise prices & increase profits.
3M: crowed on its earnings call that “the team has done a marvelous job in driving price. Price has gone up from 0.1% to 1.4% to 2.6%.” The CFO told investors, “We see that to be a tailwind.”
Tyson: saw profits nearly double after price hikes of 32% on beef and 20% on chicken which the CEO attributed to the “continued resilience of our multi-protein portfolio.” (not supply chain).
Kimberly Clark: CEO Mike Hsu crowed to investors about “multiple rounds [of] significant pricing actions” & admitted he plans to continue doing it throughout the year.
TL;DR: jack up prices to increase profits but tell customers that the ‘supply chain’ is to blame.
The “supply chain’s” to blame…
Goes the latest con game.
Are you naughty or nice?
Are you upping the price?
Inflation is fierce, it’s not tame!
“Easy to win” trade wars have their consequences.
Also, you whiners need to educate yourself about macroeconomics. The term transitory doesn’t mean “BS until the next daily news cycle” and tomorrow everything will be different. The major economies of the world are increasingly integrated, so when the UK isolates itself, the USA goes it alone against Chyyyyna, or dumbass Canadian truckers slash their own livelihoods because the babies don’t want to wear any PPE, when good friend Putin threatens a military offensive that could result in all Russian oil be off the market … and when multinational corporations are looking for any excuse to jack up prices, yes you see what happens. It affects the whole industrial world. No US prez should have power to pick and choose industry prosperity. The prior ones all tried to goose the economy with trickledown tax cuts for their rich corporate overlords and it resulted in massive federal debt that your kids will have to pay. So you whine about that too.
For the short term memory people here, the 1970s-1980s were worse, most years, for similar but slightly different reasons. No point going into detail, you wouldn’t listen to objectively provable facts if they disprove your political bias anyway.
But pick a lane already—- do you want the federal government to intervene in the economy or not???? If you misappropriate blame for past global issues on the current administration as if he had the power to immediately correct them, then why do you byyatch about regulation ? If you expect the executive branch to take measures to prop up your business or investments, well then get used to the federal government having more control all the time. Or you can stop politicizing global macroeconomics on a computer blog. That would be nice. If you want the big bad evil prez out of the economy, then by all means ask also to have federal subsidies cut off for states, agriculture, research, healthcare, retirees, interstate commerce, aviation, highways, hydropower projects, oil production, and military too. That will make everything great again. Right? Just get rid of firstthen/stevejack’s chosen scapegoat and everyone will live happily ever after.
You’re not the real Hal. You use words with more than one syllable.