The Federal Reserve’s preferred measure is at a four-decade high. Rising gas prices tied to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are likely to push it up further.
A measure of inflation closely watched by the Federal Reserve is expected to show that prices continued to rise in January, accelerating on a monthly basis and increasing from a year earlier at the fastest pace since 1982.
Economists expect that the Personal Consumption Expenditures index, which the Fed targets as it aims for 2 percent annual inflation on average over time, rose 6 percent from the previous January. Prices probably climbed 0.6 percent from December, up from 0.4 percent the prior month, based on the central estimate in a Bloomberg survey.
The Commerce Department will release the data at 8:30 a.m. on Friday. …
High inflation remains stubborn at a tense moment. With consumers already struggling with rising costs, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine this week promises to push inflation even higher as prices for oil and other commodities increase.
The Fed has been preparing to steadily pull back its pandemic-era economic support in an effort to cool off consumer demand and tame prices. The White House is monitoring inflation closely as rising prices for food, rent and gas shake consumer confidence and dent President Biden’s approval ratings ahead of midterm elections in November.
The fresh inflation reading won’t surprise economists or policymakers — the Personal Consumption Expenditures number is fairly predictable because it is based on Consumer Price Index figures that come out more quickly, along with other already available data. But it will reaffirm that price increases, which were expected to prove temporary as the pandemic economy reopened, have instead lasted almost an entire year and seeped into areas not affected by the coronavirus.
Price increases have hit a wide array of products and services, including used cars, beef, chicken, restaurant meals and home furnishings, and several trends risk keeping inflation elevated. Notably, wages are rising rapidly, and employers are finding that they can pass their climbing labor costs along to shoppers.
Economists are also warily eyeing the conflict in Ukraine, which has already caused oil and gas prices to rise and is likely to push commodity costs higher still. …
The fastest inflation in decades is contributing to Americans’ dour view of the U.S. economy.
Nearly nine in 10 adults say they are at least somewhat concerned about inflation, according to a survey conducted Feb. 1-7 by the online research firm Momentive for The New York Times. Worry about rising prices cut across generational, racial and partisan lines — 85 percent of Democrats and 96 percent of Republicans said they were concerned.
Fear of inflation is weighing on people’s view of their own finances and the economy overall. About 75 percent of respondents rated the economy as fair or poor, and only 28 percent said they expected their own finances to be better off a year from now, the lowest share in the five years Momentive has conducted the survey. …
President Biden has selected Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson as his nominee to the Supreme Court, two people familiar with his decision said, choosing a well-regarded federal appeals court judge who if confirmed would make history by becoming the first Black woman to serve as a justice.
In Judge Jackson, 51, Mr. Biden selected a liberal-leaning jurist who earned a measure of Republican support when he nominated her to the influential federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., last summer. …
Judge Jackson was chosen from a short list that also included Leondra R. Kruger of the California Supreme Court, a former law clerk on the Supreme Court whose Yale Law pedigree is shared by four of the current justices, and J. Michelle Childs, a Federal District Court judge in South Carolina, a state whose Black voters Mr. Biden has credited with helping him win the presidency. …
… She is related by marriage to Paul D. Ryan, the former House speaker and Republican vice-presidential candidate. (Dr. Jackson’s husband is the twin brother of Mr. Ryan’s brother-in-law.) At her 2012 confirmation hearing, Mr. Ryan testified in her support.
“Our politics may differ, but my praise for Ketanji’s intellect, for her character, for her integrity, it is unequivocal,” Mr. Ryan said. “She is an amazing person, and I favorably recommend your consideration.”
While her confirmation would not change the court’s ideological balance — conservatives appointed by Republicans would retain their 6-3 majority — it would achieve another first: all three justices appointed by Democratic presidents would be women.
Judge Jackson, who was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in Miami, graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Law School, Justice Breyer’s alma mater. She went on to clerk for him during the 1999-2000 Supreme Court term.
During her confirmation hearing to be a Federal District Court judge in Washington in 2012, Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District of Columbia’s House delegate, recounted that Justice Breyer had two words when asked about her eligibility for the post: “Hire her.”
put millions of people out of work to tank the economy,
You got it right, whack Labor and demand goes away, supply chain issues subside, and there is no excuse for higher mostly artificial pricing which is driving inflation which for now people have had the dollars from pandemic fiscal stimulation.
The Fed has done the same since Volcker as of recent and before. Yellen agrees with this crude strategy also. Too many dollars chasing too little product. Although higher prices will stifle demand too.
Robert Waldman reminded us (me) of something which I had forgotten. Typically, food and fuel are the drivers of inflation.
The Federal Reserve’s preferred measure is at a four-decade high. Rising gas prices tied to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could push it up further.
A measure of inflation that the Federal Reserve watches closely accelerated again in January, hitting a new 40-year high and speeding up on a monthly basis as food and energy prices climbed sharply.
The Personal Consumption Expenditures index, which the Fed targets as it aims for 2 percent annual inflation on average over time, rose 6.1 percent over the past year, the fastest pace of increase since 1982. Prices climbed 0.6 percent in January from December, up from 0.4 percent the prior month.
The data, released on Friday by the Commerce Department, was a fresh reminder that inflation remains stubbornly high as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sends oil and other commodity prices higher and promises to continue to boost inflation. …
The Fed has been preparing to steadily pull back its pandemic-era economic support in an effort to cool off consumer demand and tame prices. The White House is monitoring inflation closely as rising prices for food, rent and gas shake consumer confidence and dent President Biden’s approval ratings ahead of midterm elections in November.
The new inflation reading won’t surprise economists or policymakers — the Personal Consumption Expenditures number is fairly predictable because it is based on Consumer Price Index figures that come out more quickly, along with other already available data. But it reaffirms that price increases, which were expected to prove temporary as the pandemic economy reopened, have instead lasted almost an entire year and seeped into areas not affected by the coronavirus.
Rapid price increases have hit a wide array of products and services, including used cars, beef, chicken, restaurant meals and home furnishings, and several trends risk keeping inflation elevated. Notably, wages are rising rapidly, and employers are finding that they can pass their climbing labor costs along to shoppers.
Economists are also warily eyeing the conflict in Ukraine, which has already caused oil and gas prices to rise and is likely to further push up commodity costs. But some are also betting that the uncertainty it has spurred could inspire the Fed to take a more cautious approach as it tries to slow down the economy. Stock prices rose on Friday as traders pared back expectations that the Federal Open Market Committee will make a large, half-percentage-point rate increase in March in an effort to decisively tamp down inflation. …
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
The first step in developing a successful strategy for bringing about sociopolitical change is to determine whether life imitates art or whether art imitates life. If life imitates art, then all that must be done is to author a widely read book that tells of the proposed ideals, conduct book reviews, and presentations, and then wait for change to happen. OTOH, if art imitates life, then to bring about change requires a vision of an effective solution to be promulgated through organized political action with broad and tireless participation. Once successful then books can be written to explain the evolution to posterity.
The difference between social consciences of Victor Hugo, Robert Hunter (author of Poverty), and John Steinbeck versus the social consciences (if you will) of Ludwig Von Mises, (alias) Ayn Rand, and Russell Kirk was a matter of moral sentiment rather than a distinction in the order of cause and effect. Even in class warfare it is the winners that get to write the history text books.
Thousands of Ukrainians will end up in countries led by nationalist governments that have been reluctant to welcome refugees in the past.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has pushed tens of thousands of people out of their homes and fleeing across borders to escape violence. But unlike the refugees who have flooded Europe in crises over the past decade, they are being welcomed.
Countries that have for years resisted taking in refugees from wars in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan are now opening their doors to Ukrainians as Russian forces carry out a nationwide military assault. Perhaps 100,000 Ukrainians already have left their homes, according to United Nations estimates, and at least half of them have crowded onto trains, jammed highways or walked to get across their country’s borders in what officials warn could become the world’s next refugee crisis.
U.N. and American officials described their concerted diplomatic push for Ukraine’s neighbors and other European nations to respond to the outpouring of need. President Biden “is certainly prepared” to accept refugees from Ukraine, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said on Thursday, but she noted that the majority of them would probably choose to remain in Europe so they could more easily return home once the fighting ended.
“Heartfelt thanks to the governments and people of countries keeping their borders open and welcoming refugees,” said Filippo Grandi, the head of the U.N. refugee agency. He warned that “many more” Ukrainians were moving toward the borders. …
In Poland, government officials assisted by American soldiers and diplomats have set up processing centers for Ukrainians. “Anyone fleeing from bombs, from Russian rifles, can count on the support of the Polish state,” the Polish interior minister, Mariusz Kaminski, told reporters on Thursday. His government is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a border wall, a project it began after refugees and migrants from the Middle East tried to reach the country last year but ended up marooned in neighboring Belarus.
The military in Hungary is allowing in Ukrainians through sections of the border that had been closed. Hungary’s hard-line prime minister, Viktor Orban, has previously called refugees a threat to his country, and his government has been accused of caging and starving them.
Farther West, Chancellor Karl Nehammer of Austria said that “of course we will take in refugees if necessary” in light of the crisis in Ukraine. …
Scientists released a pair of extensive studies on Saturday that point to a market in Wuhan, China, as the origin of the coronavirus pandemic. Analyzing data from a variety of sources, they concluded that the coronavirus was very likely present in live mammals sold in the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in late 2019 and suggested that the virus twice spilled over into people working or shopping there. They said they found no support for an alternate theory that the coronavirus escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan. …
“When you look at all of the evidence together, it’s an extraordinarily clear picture that the pandemic started at the Huanan market,” said Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona and a co-author of both studies.
The two reports have not yet been published in a scientific journal that would require undergoing peer review. …
… some outside scientists who have been hesitant to endorse the market origin hypothesis said they remained unconvinced. Jesse Bloom, a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, said in an interview that there remained a glaring absence of direct evidence that animals at the market had themselves been infected with the coronavirus.
“I think what they’re arguing could be true,” Dr. Bloom said of the new studies. “But I don’t think the quality of the data is sufficient to say that any of these scenarios are true with confidence.”
In their new study, Dr. Worobey and his colleagues present evidence that wild mammals that might have harbored the coronavirus were being sold in December 2019. But no wildlife was left at the market by the time Chinese researchers arrived in early 2020 to collect genetic samples. …
A Key Inflation Gauge Is Still Rising, and War Could Make It Worse
NY Times – Feb 25
Inflation is a worry for 9 in 10 Americans polled.
NY Times – Feb 25
Biden Chooses Ketanji Brown Jackson for Supreme Court
NY Times – Feb 25
The problem is, the fed’s typical answer for “inflationary pressure” is to tank the economy and put millions of people out of work.
JG:
put millions of people out of work to tank the economy,
You got it right, whack Labor and demand goes away, supply chain issues subside, and there is no excuse for higher mostly artificial pricing which is driving inflation which for now people have had the dollars from pandemic fiscal stimulation.
The Fed has done the same since Volcker as of recent and before. Yellen agrees with this crude strategy also. Too many dollars chasing too little product. Although higher prices will stifle demand too.
Robert Waldman reminded us (me) of something which I had forgotten. Typically, food and fuel are the drivers of inflation.
A Key Inflation Gauge Is Still Rising, and War Could Make It Worse
NY Times – Feb 25
The first step in developing a successful strategy for bringing about sociopolitical change is to determine whether life imitates art or whether art imitates life. If life imitates art, then all that must be done is to author a widely read book that tells of the proposed ideals, conduct book reviews, and presentations, and then wait for change to happen. OTOH, if art imitates life, then to bring about change requires a vision of an effective solution to be promulgated through organized political action with broad and tireless participation. Once successful then books can be written to explain the evolution to posterity.
The difference between social consciences of Victor Hugo, Robert Hunter (author of Poverty), and John Steinbeck versus the social consciences (if you will) of Ludwig Von Mises, (alias) Ayn Rand, and Russell Kirk was a matter of moral sentiment rather than a distinction in the order of cause and effect. Even in class warfare it is the winners that get to write the history text books.
For Ukraine’s Refugees, Europe Opens Doors That Were Shut to Others
NY Times – Feb 26
In other news…
New Research Points to Wuhan Market as Covid-19 Origin
NY Times – Feb 26