Call it a preview of Wednesday's release of the official inflation figures for April, but American consumers say they expect inflation to go higher — and stay there longer. A New York Federal Reserve survey just out Monday shows that consumers have "raised their expectations for price increases both in the near and longer term, fueled by higher inflation in home prices along with fuel and energy."
And coffee. Don't forget the coffee. But I'll come back to that momentarily.
CNBC reported earlier today that the NY Fed's report showed that our expectations for inflation "increased to 3.3%, up 0.3 percentage point from March and the highest since November 2023."
"For the five-year outlook, the expectation rose to 2.8%, up 0.2 percentage point," and, I probably don't have to remind you, "all of the readings are well ahead of the Fed’s 2% goal and reflective of the stubborn nature of inflation this year."
Washington is done — for a while, anyway — with the so-called "stimulus" spending that injected trillions of funny money into the economy, kicking off the nasty inflation that began in 2021 and continued through 2022. While it's slacked off, my expectation is that American consumers are correct in their darkening outlook. Washington is adding [dr_evil_voice] ONE TRILLION DOLLARS [/dr_evil_voice] in new debt about every 100 days with no relief in sight.
Complicating things further, Presidentish Joe Biden's Big Re-Regulation Adventure and his trillion-dollar energy boondoggles make it harder for the economy to generate the productivity gains needed to catch up to the endlessly growing supply of money and debt.
The interest we pay on the federal debt has already eclipsed defense spending as a portion of the federal budget and is on track to eclipse Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid to become the biggest item on our ledger of shame. It's difficult to make the necessary spending cuts when cutting the biggest item would result in a national default.
TL;DR: Inflation is here to stay.
So do me a favor please and keep all this in mind on Wednesday when the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) official number — particularly when it comes to your morning cup of coffee.
BLS uses a "basket of goods" regular people buy to calculate the inflation rate. The problem is, that they keep taking things out of the basket. The latest to go is coffee.
This is unusual:
— The Kobeissi Letter (@KobeissiLetter) May 12, 2024
The US BLS has announced that coffee prices will no longer be factored into CPI inflation data.
In fact, the April 2024 CPI inflation report this week will be the first to NOT include coffee price inflation.
Well, the obvious next step is to see what happened… pic.twitter.com/ibkc3HmISS
If BLS still used the same basket of goods it used in 1980, the rate would have peaked last year at about 18% instead of the official 10% figure. Even now it would probably be somewhere around 8% instead of March's official 3.5% annual rate.
There are lies, damned lies, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
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