U.S. Inflation Hits 30-Year High on November 10, 2021 at 8:48 am EST.
“Inflation across a broad swath of products that consumers buy every day was even worse than expected in October, hitting its highest point in more than 30 years,” CNBC reports.
Overall, consumer prices surged 6.2% from October 2020, which is the largest surge since December 1990, according to CNBC:
Gas: +49.6% since last year
Bacon: +20.2% Eggs: +11.6%
Fresh Fish: +11%
Pork Chops: +15.9%
Shoes: +5.2%
Dresses: +9.2%
TVs: +10.4%
Computers: +8.4%
Sporting Goods: +8.7%
Used Cars & Trucks: +26.4%
Car & Truck Rentals: +39.1%
REUTERS
“Fed’s inflation debate heats up as Biden nears Fed chair pick”
By Ann Saphir and Jonnelle Marte
November 16, 2021
Nov 16 (Reuters) – A public debate among Federal Reserve policymakers over how to respond to high inflation intensified on Tuesday, even as U.S. President Joe Biden neared a decision about who will lead the central bank for the next four years.
At the same time, with inflation rising at its fastest in decades and well above the Fed’s 2% goal, consumer sentiment is down to a “level that you might associate with a recession,” Richmond Fed President Thomas Barkin noted Tuesday.
“I think that’s very much because of the impact that prices have on people,” including those who spend a significant part of their pay on food and gas, Barkin said.
Is “Corn Pop” Biden trying to cut the CO2 emissions of the US to combat global warming, or is he trying to increase CO2 emissions to save his presidency?
REUTERS
“EXCLUSIVE-U.S. asks big countries to coordinate releases from oil reserves – sources”
By Trevor Hunnicutt, Jarrett Renshaw, Timothy Gardner
NOVEMBER 17, 2021
WASHINGTON, Nov 17 (Reuters) – The Biden administration has asked some of the world’s largest oil consuming nations to consider releasing some of their crude reserves in a coordinated effort to lower prices and stimulate the economic recovery, according to several people familiar with the matter.
Global oil prices touched seven-year highs in late October, with populations returning to the roads and rails while supply has not kept pace with demand.
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and allied producers including Russia have resisted calls from President Joe Biden to speed up the rate of their supply increases.
In recent weeks, Biden and top aides have raised the issue with close allies including Japan, as well as with China, the sources said.
Joe Biden is doing a real bang-up job of destroying the US economy with his out-of-control inflation and the common man and woman with it:
REUTERS
“U.S. homebuilding drops, construction backlog surges as shortages worsen”
By Lucia Mutikani
November 17, 2021
WASHINGTON, Nov 17 (Reuters) – U.S. single-family homebuilding tumbled in October while the number of houses authorized for construction but not yet started jumped to a 15-year high, underscoring the disruption to the housing market from an ongoing shortage of materials and labor.
“Residential housing construction activity continues to flounder,” said Christopher Rupkey, chief economist at FWDBONDS in New York.
“There are zoning problems, higher land costs, a lack of labor, and inflation has inflated the cost of raw building materials.”
Single-family housing starts, which account for the largest share of the housing market, dropped 3.9% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.039 million units last month.
The fourth-straight monthly decline pushed starts to the lowest level since August 2020.
Homebuilding has essentially been treading water this year as builders battle shortages and higher prices of raw materials.
Lumber, which is used for framing, remains expensive and prices for copper, another essential material in homebuilding, are high.
Construction costs jumped a record 12.3% year-on-year in October, according to producer price data published last week.
REUTERS
“Fed’s Evans says taper to take until mid-2022 to complete”
Reuters
November 17, 2021
Evans said he is less confident than a few months ago about his baseline view that inflation will recede next year, given how long price pressures have been building already.
The federal reserve is finally waking up and realizing what an ass it has been making out of itself with its blather about inflation being “transitory”:
Reuters
“Transitory inflation blues: Don’t ask Jay and the band to play that one again”
By Reuters Staff
November 30, 2021
(Reuters) – It was the Federal Reserve’s word du jour for most of 2021, but “transitory” looks like it will soon be set out at the curb along with the rest of the year-end holiday scraps.
“Transitory” has been the U.S. central bank’s – and most notably Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s – preferred adjective for describing the nature of this year’s run of high inflation.
It appears to have first popped into Powell’s lexicon as “transient” at his final news conference of 2020 and transitioned to “transitory” in early 2021 as he discussed what was then expected to be a short-lived run of higher year-over-year inflation readings driven by “base effects” – or the comparison with pandemic-suppressed data in the previous year.
“I would note that a transitory rise in inflation above 2%, as seems likely to occur this year, would not meet this standard,” Powell said on March 17 when discussing whether the coming wave of inflation would be sufficient to meet the central bank’s three-part test for an eventual increase in interest rates.
By April, the term had become enshrined in the statement issued at the end of each of the Fed’s two-day policy meetings, and it has remained there since, although a number of Powell’s colleagues have grown disdainful of its usage in recent months.
Now, though, with inflation at the highest level in three decades and running at least twice the Fed’s targeted rate for six straight months, even Powell says it is time to show the house guest the door.
“I think the word ‘transitory’ has different meanings to different people,” Powell told the U.S. Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday when asked about his persistent use of the word.
“To many it carries a sense of short-lived.”
“We tended to use it to mean that it won’t leave a permanent mark in the form of higher inflation.”
“I think it’s probably a good time to retire that word and try to explain more clearly what we mean.”
Reuters
With inflation risks rising, Fed’s Powell prepares for possible pivot”
By Jonnelle Marte and Lindsay Dunsmuir
December 1, 2021
NEW YORK, Dec 1 (Reuters) – The U.S. central bank needs to be ready to respond to the possibility that inflation may not recede in the second half of next year as most forecasters currently expect, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said on Wednesday.
As if to underscore those concerns, a survey published Wednesday by the Federal Reserve showed firms across the country are increasingly grappling with higher prices and scrambling to fill jobs amid labor shortages, though they are able in many cases to pass on higher costs to customers, with little resistance.
“But I assure you we will use our tools to make sure that this high inflation we are experiencing does not become entrenched.”
Am I the only one in America, I wonder, who is damn sick and tired of hearing this goofy fed chief Powell who Brandon just re-appointed head of the fed talking this horse**** of “I assure you we will use our tools to make sure that this high inflation we are experiencing does not become entrenched,” when the inflation we are experiencing that is becoming entrenched is a product of the same tools of the fed that wanted inflation to run HOT, and now it is gotten away from them because they have no “tools” they can use to stop it!
How ******* stupid do we have to be to be GOOD AMERICANS today?
And I’m refusing to do it!
CNBC
“U.S. 10-year Treasury yield steady near 1.45% amid persistent omicron variant fears”
Maggie Fitzgerald, Vicky McKeever
Dec. 2, 2021
Fed Chair Jerome Powell told U.S. House members on Wednesday that the “economy is very strong and inflationary pressures are higher, and it is therefore appropriate in my view to consider wrapping up the taper of our asset purchases, which we actually announced at the November meeting, perhaps a few months sooner.”
Cole Smead, president and portfolio manager at Smead Capital Management, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Thursday that this more hawkish tone on monetary policy represented a “mea culpa.”
“What Jay Powell is saying is ’I was wrong,” he said, adding that it is not yet fully understood what this change in tone means for Fed policy and the value of assets.