Back at the end of May, Germany’s statistical accounting agency (deStatis) added another one to the inflationary inferno raging across the mainstream media. According to its flash calculations, German consumer prices last month had increased by the fastest rate in 13 years. Even using the European “harmonized” methodology (Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices, or HICP), inflation had reached 2.4% year-over-year [...]
Consumer prices in Japan fell again in May, according to that country’s Ministry of Finance. The headline CPI was 0.1% less last month than it had been in the same month during 2020. Though it was the eighth straight for outright deflation, there was some good news in the core rate, if you could call it that, which flipped to [...]
JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon hasn’t produced an enviable track record opining on inflationary potential. He’s forever deeply entrenched in the inflation camp, and because he sits atop the corporate structure of one of the world’s biggest and most well-known banks, it does seem reasonable at first how his opinion on monetary matters is taken very seriously – despite repeatedly missing [...]
Initially, the dots got all the attention. Though these things are beyond hopeless, the media needs them to write up its account of a more fruitful monetary policy outcome because markets continue to discount that entirely. Dots look like inflationary success if possibly even now more likely, whereas yields and especially bills have (re)taken a more skeptical approach pricing almost [...]
The FOMC held a meeting and that can only mean dots. These are the individual policymaker’s views on where the federal funds target range might end up down the road. The latest update for the June 2021 central bank conclave shows several more voting members projecting the first rate hikes to begin toward the end of next year, a supposedly [...]
Yesterday, lumber. Today, copper. The “doctor” has been in reverse for better than two months now, with trading in the current session pounding the commodity to a new multi-month low. Down almost $0.19 for the day, an unusual and eye-opening loss, this brings the cumulative decline to 9.2% since the peak way back on May 11.Is this just another modest [...]
While capital “E” economics can never seem to get out of its own, infatuated with statistics and regressions instead, small “e” economics is proven time and again. Simple supply and demand curves aren’t a realistic simulation of potential conditions, yet they are far more helpful than DSGE models even if highly stylized representations. Take, for example, lumber prices. Anyone remotely [...]
It isn’t all base effects, or even all that much of them. Though these were higher in May 2021 than they had been in April, US consumer prices have accelerated regardless. According to the BLS and its latest CPI estimates, the net change in its headline index last month from last May was an excitable 4.99% (unadjusted). That’s the highest [...]
Inflation is more than just any old touchy subject in an age overflowing with crude, visceral debates up and down the spectrum reaching into every corner of life. It is about life itself, and not just quality. When the prices of the goods (or services) you absolutely depend upon go up, your entire world becomes that much more difficult. For [...]
One of the more compelling aspects of the last LABOR SHORTAGE!!!!, in an outright contradictory way, was how it was made up of entirely anecdotes. Lacking data, especially wage data, the narrative was instead kept up and alive by the media hyping every small creative innovation companies were using if only to avoid having to actually pay their workers and [...]
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