The price index that the Federal Reserve watches most closely climbed 6.6 percent in the year through March, the fastest pace of inflation since 1982 and the latest reminder of the painfully rapid price increases plaguing consumers and challenging policymakers.
But much of the gain in the Personal Consumption Expenditures price index, released Friday, was driven by a pop in energy prices that came early in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine along with rising food costs. After stripping out volatile food and fuel prices, a core index climbed by a more muted 5.2 percent in the year through March.
On a monthly basis, that core measure picked up by 0.3 percent, slightly slower than its pace the previous month. …
… Policymakers lifted interest rates in March for the first time since 2018, and have set the stage for an even larger rate increase at their meeting next week. Many Fed officials now expect to raise rates back to a neutral setting — around 2 percent — by the end of the year as they try to slow down borrowing, temper demand and allow supply to catch up. The goal is to help cool off inflation so that it does not become locked into consumer and business expectations, which might make it a more permanent feature of America’s economy.
The task ahead is difficult. The Fed has in the past caused recessions while trying to weigh down high inflation. Officials are constraining demand just as the war in Ukraine ramps up uncertainty and threatens to keep prices for gas and other commodities elevated, potentially making the cental bank’s job even more challenging.
White House officials have been emphasizing the role that the war is playing in elevating inflation, often blaming President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia for higher prices. While Russia’s invasion did push gas prices sharply higher last month, inflation had been high for months before the conflict. …
The eurozone economy grew by 0.2 percent during the first three months of the year, Eurostat, Europe’s statistics agency, reported on Friday, as rising prices, flagging consumer confidence related to the war in Ukraine and continuing supply chain disruptions exerted a drag on the region’s recovery from the pandemic.
“Clearly the picture for the first quarter is one of pretty weak growth,” said Ángel Talavera, head of European economics at Oxford Economics. “Consumer confidence has tanked everywhere pretty sharply,” he noted, adding that household spending was weak as wages failed to keep pace with inflation, particularly in food and energy.
The figures for gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic output, varied widely among the 19 countries that use the euro. In France, where Covid restrictions remained in place for much of the first quarter, growth stagnated. …
… Germany, with the largest economy in Europe, saw a 0.2 percent increase in G.D.P. for January, February and March, bringing its year-over-year growth to 4 percent.
“The economic consequences of the war in Ukraine have had a growing impact on the short-term economic development since late February,” the Federal Statistics Office of Germany said in a statement.
In Italy, by contrast, real G.D.P. fell by 0.2 percent from the previous quarter.
Growth in the 27 countries that make up the European Union was a bit brighter in January, February and March, rising by 0.4 percent compared to the previous three months.
— A new Omicron subvariant called BA.4 appears to be driving a sharp rise in COVID-19 cases in South Africa, health experts say.
The number of daily cases reported by the country has shot up from just a few hundred a few weeks ago to just over 6,000, and the rate of positive tests has jumped from 4% in mid-April to 19% as of Thursday, according to theAssociated Press.
Despite the surge in cases, there has been only a slight bump in COVID-19 hospitalizations and no increase in deaths, stressed Salim Abdool Karim, a public health expert at the University of KwaZulu-Natal who previously advised the South Africa government on its COVID-19 response.
It appears the BA.4 subvariant is quickly pushing aside the original Omicron variant and other versions of the coronavirus, but “it’s too early to tell whether BA.4 is going to cause a fully-fledged wave,” Abdool Karim said, theAP reported.
There is one concerning trend involving the new subvariant, however: Children infected with it are the first to be ending up in hospitals, echoing what happened during the first Omicron surge, said Helen Rees, executive director of the Reproductive Health and HIV Institute at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.
Russia has said that the threat of a nuclear war is very real and defense stocks have skyrocketed since the invasion in Ukraine, prompting Cold War-era concerns even in Massachusetts.
There is a bill pending in the State House that would create a citizens’ commission to study the potential threat and look into the state’s involvement with nuclear weapon production. The Massachusetts Legislature has less than a week to vote on the issue before a May 4 deadline.
Harvard scholar Oleh Kotsyuba and Northeastern University professors Mai’a Cross and Pablo Calderon weighed in on whether Massachusetts should create this type of commission and how real the nuclear threat really is to the Bay State during NBC10 Boston’s weekly series, “Russia-Ukraine Q&A.”
A report from NuclearBan.US, a nonprofit organization that seeks to ban nuclear weapons, states that Massachusetts is a target in part because it’s home to nuclear weapons facilities for the U.S. military.
“Massachusetts is a serious target for nuclear attack,” said Emma Pike, Massachusetts Advocacy Coordinator for NuclearBan.US. “Even as an expert who has been in the field for nearly a decade, I had no idea that my own home state was a top nuclear target in America until recently. It’s terrifying stuff.”
Local experts were less convinced of an immediate nuclear threat to the Bay State. They did agree, however, that creating a commission is important to maintain the cultural taboo around nuclear weapons.
A doctor from Boston appealed directly to leading Russian scientists Wednesday, warning that a nuclear war triggered by the “massive bloodshed” in Ukraine could bring the “end of human civilization.”
Addressing the prestigious Russian Academy of Science, Dr. James Muller, a cardiologist and Nobel laureate, cautioned that the ongoing destruction in Ukraine could escalate and is preventing collaboration between Americans and Russians on a range of medical and scientific issues. “There is no possibility of raising money in the US for cooperation with Russian physicians until the violence has ceased,” he said.
His impassioned remarks prompted some top Russian scientists — who’d spoken earlier about being ostracized by international colleagues behind a “new Iron Curtain” — to say they’d consider joining US counterparts in a public call to oppose nuclear conflict and resume collaboration.
Muller spoke in Russian to about 115 scientists in a 15-minute video address broadcast on a Russian scientific television channel. To illustrate the danger of nuclear war, he described how a nuclear attack could obliterate Boston — starting with a deadly “fireball” near the Charles River — along with other cities in the United States and Russia.
“It is difficult to respond to the nuclear threat because the scale of the damage is beyond our imagination,” he said. “But we must peer into the darkness to plan our escape.” …
Dr. James Edward Muller does not look like a rabble rouser.
A cardiologist and the associate director of the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology, at Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. Muller has the contemplative demeanor of a man who once considered the priesthood, drawn by the beauty and mysticism of the Mass.
Instead he became a physician and later a founder of two social action groups, the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985, and the Voice of the Faithful …
There has been speculation that what Russia might do is employ tactical (i.e. less powerful) nuclear weapons in Ukraine if it suits them to do so. There is no international agreement that forbids this, oddly enough. If it comes to the point that intercontinental missiles are flying, or even intermediate range missiles are used on European cities, Russia will itself be under attack by NATO nations, and the world as we knew it will be finished. Not just Boston.
Robert Oppenheimer (father of the A-bomb), at the Trinity Test, Alamagordo, NM:
His infamous quote. As he witnessed the first detonation of a nuclear weapon on July 16, 1945, a piece of Hindu scripture ran through the mind of Robert Oppenheimer: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”
The Fed’s favorite inflation index is still rising fast, but shows some hints of slowing
NY Times – April 29
Europe’s economy slows to a crawl as war and inflation take a toll
NY Times – April 29
Omicron BA.4 looks like trouble:
Also to be found here
New Omicron Subvariant Causing COVID-19 Spike in South Africa
In US News (& World Report) – April 29, 2022
Not just in the Fairfield (Montana) Sun Times.
meanwhile, Massachusetts is pulling out the old “duck and cover” playbook…
Boston doctor, addressing Russians, warns against nuclear war and ‘end of civilization’
Boston Globe – March 16
Address to the Professors of the Russian Academy of Science
March 16, 2022
James E. Muller, MD
International Physicians for Prevention of Nuclear War
Hopefully, this is the three-page address
Doctor for Peace Gains Power for Laity
NY Times – April 2003
Hopefully, this is the three-page address
There has been speculation that what Russia might do is employ tactical (i.e. less powerful) nuclear weapons in Ukraine if it suits them to do so. There is no international agreement that forbids this, oddly enough. If it comes to the point that intercontinental missiles are flying, or even intermediate range missiles are used on European cities, Russia will itself be under attack by NATO nations, and the world as we knew it will be finished. Not just Boston.
Robert Oppenheimer (father of the A-bomb), at the Trinity Test, Alamagordo, NM:
His infamous quote. As he witnessed the first detonation of a nuclear weapon on July 16, 1945, a piece of Hindu scripture ran through the mind of Robert Oppenheimer: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”