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Money, Banking and the Economy
teedubbya Offline
#51 Posted:
Joined: 08-14-2003
Posts: 95,637
yea he was sort of a deek anyway
Speyside Offline
#52 Posted:
Joined: 03-16-2015
Posts: 13,106
Lawyers, guns, and money.
RayR Offline
#53 Posted:
Joined: 07-20-2020
Posts: 8,796
Remember your overlords said inflation was only transitory, but a former IMF economist says your Banana's Republic is going down!

I think that was the progressive plan all along...in the name of equality and fairness you see.

IMF Economist: Biden’s Policies To Turn U.S. Into Latin American-Style Economy

OAN Newsroom
UPDATED 5:20 PM PT – Monday, July 12, 2021

Quote:
A rising number of economists have warned Joe Biden’s policies could turn the U.S. into a Latin American type of economy. On Monday, Former International Monetary Fund Deputy Director Desmond Lachman said Biden’s inflation, money printing and high government spending posed a problem for the U.S. economy.

Lachman said Biden’s policies could push the U.S. budget deficit up to 15 percent per year. He warned this was not a sustainable level of deficit spending, which may bankrupt the U.S.

Lachman went on to point out such policies lead to devaluation of the national currency and fuel poverty, as seen in many Latin American countries.

More...

https://www.oann.com/imf-economist-bidens-policies-to-turn-u-s-into-latin-american-style-economy/


What else can be said but you stupid ba*tards that voted for this regime...thanks a lot you MF'ers!
rfenst Offline
#54 Posted:
Joined: 06-23-2007
Posts: 39,100
teedubbya wrote:
Thanks Biden!Angry

LOL


Inflation Hits Some Prices More Than Others
Costs are surging for many goods as the Covid-19 pandemic eases, but the impact is uneven

WSJ

Inflation heated up in June, driven by continued strong consumer demand and lingering supply constraints. Overall consumer prices rose 5.4% in June from the previous year, the highest 12-month rate since August 2008, the Labor Department said Tuesday.

But consumer prices don’t all move at the same pace or for the same reason. To get a sense of where inflation is heading, it helps to look at price movements item by item.

There are four main trends underlying the June inflation report. First are the items where prices fell sharply at the start of the pandemic and that are now returning to their pre-pandemic levels. Second are items where prices have temporarily risen above their pre-pandemic levels due to supply constraints and could come down. Third are items where prices are likely settling at a permanently higher level. And fourth are items where price increases have slowed rather than accelerated as a result of the pandemic, at least for now.

These trends exert competing forces on overall inflation as the economy adjusts to a new normal, said Kathy Bostjancic, chief U.S. financial economist at Oxford Economics.

“It’s very unlikely a year from now we’d be seeing this continued type of rate of change in inflation,” she said.

Returning to Pre-Pandemic Levels
Airfares and hotel prices collapsed at the start of the pandemic as Americans canceled travel plans and stayed home to avoid getting sick. Now that vaccination rates are rising, people are booking summer trips, and business travel is picking up.

But prices for both items remain below where they were two years ago, in June 2019, before the start of the pandemic. That suggests they still have room to rise in the months ahead before they reach their pre-pandemic levels.

Supply Constraints
Manufacturers closed factories and pared back production at the start of the pandemic. Now, as economies around the world reopen, they are scrambling to ramp up to meet a surge in demand. That, combined with a global shortage of computer chips, has caused prices to rise rapidly for items such as new cars. Higher new-car prices have led buyers to move to the used-car market, driving prices up there as well.

Prices for new cars were about 5.1% above where they were two years ago, before the pandemic. Prices for used cars were up 41.3% over two years. The monthly used-car price increase represents about a third of total inflation in June.

Once supply catches up to demand, the rise in prices should moderate, said Ms. Bostjancic.

“My sense would be probably used-car prices eventually decline back to trend, but that’s a harder call to make right now,” she said.

Permanently Higher Prices?
Prices at restaurants rose 4.1% in June from the previous year, largely due to a shortage of labor. Restaurant work requires close contact with others, which has dissuaded some job seekers worried about getting sick. The lack of child-care options and a continuation of unemployment benefits might also be keeping some restaurant workers out of the labor force.

Employers, in response, are boosting wages to draw the cooks and servers they need. Wages for leisure and hospitality workers were up 7.1% in June from the previous year, according to a separate Labor Department report. That has translated into higher prices for customers.

It is possible the labor shortage could ease in the months ahead as higher wages draw more workers. School reopenings in the fall and the scheduled end of extended jobless benefits later this year could also entice more people back to work.

That would result in slower price appreciation at restaurants, but prices could remain permanently higher than they were before the pandemic, said Ms. Bostjancic.

Slower Price Increases—For Now
Rent increases slowed early in the pandemic as people stayed put or decided they would rather own a home. They haven’t picked up much since then. The rent on a primary residence was up 1.9% in June from the previous year. In the months before the pandemic, rents were rising close to 4%.

Increases in owners’ equivalent rents—the Labor Department’s estimate of what homeowners would have to pay each month if they were renting their own home—also haven’t rebounded very far.

Those prices could pick up in the months ahead, Ms. Bostjancic said, in part due to rapid increases in home prices. It takes about 18 months for a rise in real-estate prices to translate into stronger owners’ equivalent rents, she said.

“That’s one of those categories that needs to catch up following the worst of the pandemic,” she said.

That could add to inflation pressures in the coming months. Shelter costs represent almost a third of the basket of goods and services that the department looks at to calculate overall inflation.

The Labor Department doesn’t take the soaring price of new homes into account when calculating inflation because it considers home purchases to be a long-term investment rather than something consumers buy on a regular basis.
rfenst Offline
#55 Posted:
Joined: 06-23-2007
Posts: 39,100
Powell Gets His Inflation
‘Transitory’ price increases are now up 5.4% year-over-year.

WSJ Editorial Board

How do you define transitory? Three months? A year? Or is it two? Inquiring minds want to know after Tuesday’s report that the consumer price index rose 0.9% in June. Consumer prices are now up 5.4% from a year earlier, so what the Federal Reserve means when it dismisses these price increases as “transitory” takes on growing economic and political significance.

The June increase was nearly twice what economic forecasters predicted, which isn’t reassuring. The inflation optimists are dismissing the June increase as the result of “special” factors that are likely to ease. Used car and truck prices rose 10.5% in the month, accounting for about half the increase in core CPI. No doubt vehicle prices won’t keep rising at that rate, but then that’s also what we were told when they rose 10% in April. This won’t reassure the non-affluent Americans who buy used cars.

Price increases were widespread across the economy, which suggests factors that may not be transitory. Food prices rose 0.8%, and energy prices 1.5% in the month. The Fed likes to strip out food and energy prices, which are volatile, to examine core inflation. But the core increase was also 0.9% in June.

Year-over-year core prices are up 4.5%, which is less than for all consumer prices, but is still well above the Fed’s target of 2% a year. The last time core prices rose 4.5% in a 12-month period was 1991 and the Fed’s benchmark short-term interest rate was above 5%. Today it’s near zero.

These price jolts aren’t likely to stir Fed Chairman Jerome Powell when he testifies on Capitol Hill this week. That’s because Mr. Powell is getting the inflation he wanted. The Fed’s new policy, which it unveiled last year, says that to achieve its 2% inflation target it is willing to tolerate inflation above that for some time. Congratulations, you’ve got it.

One risk for the Fed is that more months of these price increases will become what consumers and businesses come to expect. To use the Fed jargon, prices would no longer be “well-anchored.” That may be happening. The NFIB’s small business survey for June, released Tuesday, found the share of owners raising average selling prices rose seven points to 47%, the highest reading since January 1981.

Owners are under pressure to raise prices because their costs are rising, especially for labor. Some 46% of small-business owners reported job openings that couldn’t be filled in the month. This is one result of the market distortion caused by excessive federal jobless benefits that exceed what people can make by working.

The political implications of this inflation spike could be potent. The price increases mean that real average hourly earnings fell 0.5% in June. They are down 1.7% in the last year. This is despite healthy wage increases and hiring bonuses from employers desperate to find and keep scarce workers. If real wages continue to fall, workers will demand higher pay untied to productivity increases, which will further increase inflationary pressure. It will also take the shine off the post-pandemic boom that President Biden wants to take credit for.

The price increases put Mr. Powell in a monetary and political bind of his own making. Some at the Fed may feel obliged to tighten money sooner than Mr. Powell would like. But if he does, that would raise the cost of financing the trillions of dollars in new spending that Democrats in Congress have passed, or soon will.

Watch for Democrats to keep the pressure on Mr. Powell this week by coaxing him to endorse more spending. They know Mr. Powell’s term expires next year, and they want to leverage his desire for reappointment into a fiscal endorsement.

All of which makes us wonder why Republicans would want to put their fingerprints on any of this Democratic spending. Democrats and the Fed own this inflation spike. If Republicans help pass a $1 trillion infrastructure bill, Democrats will make them co-owners.
RayR Offline
#56 Posted:
Joined: 07-20-2020
Posts: 8,796
Yep, told ya so. Don't ever believe the money magicians at the FED.

The Republicans who are supposedly principled fiscally responsible small-government guys just can resist binging on FED counterfeit loot too.
bgz Offline
#57 Posted:
Joined: 07-29-2014
Posts: 13,023
RayR wrote:
Yep, told ya so. Don't ever believe the money magicians at the FED.

The Republicans who are supposedly principled fiscally responsible small-government guys just can resist binging on FED counterfeit loot too.


I know you consider "printing" money to be "counterfeiting" money... that implies you don't think fiat currency is money, which is not a shocker... After thinking about it though... by that same logic, would mining gold not be the same thing as printing money? So that kind of implies that you wouldn't want that either, because if gold was the standard... and people mined it, that would be the equivalent of counterfeiting.

So that means you don't like money.

So what would you have in it's place? Go back to the good ol' bartering system?

How would you pay hookers? With a ham sammich?
frankj1 Offline
#58 Posted:
Joined: 02-08-2007
Posts: 44,211
that wouldn't be Kosher
bgz Offline
#59 Posted:
Joined: 07-29-2014
Posts: 13,023
Tuna then?
frankj1 Offline
#60 Posted:
Joined: 02-08-2007
Posts: 44,211
bgz wrote:
Tuna then?

dolphin free?
RayR Offline
#61 Posted:
Joined: 07-20-2020
Posts: 8,796
bgz wrote:
I know you consider "printing" money to be "counterfeiting" money... that implies you don't think fiat currency is money, which is not a shocker... After thinking about it though... by that same logic, would not be the same thing as printing money? So that kind of implies that you wouldn't want that either, because if gold was the standard... and people mined it, that would be the equivalent of counterfeiting.

So that means you don't like money.

So what would you have in it's place? Go back to the good ol' bartering system?

How would you pay hookers? With a ham sammich?


Your such a moron Ben and a lousy troll. You're either playing games again or you don't know the first thing about money or history. Prolly both.
Mining gold would be the equivalent of counterfeiting you say? LOL Um...No

Honest money doesn't doesn't lose its purchasing power over time.

Fiat money is dishonest money, it can be made in enormous amounts out of thin air with just a few clicks on a computer screen or by artificially manipulating interest rates at the FED. No labor, no effort, no investing, not a single hard commodity involved. Money for nothing. Do you know what fractional reserve banking is? That's another magic trick in itself where a bank can multiply by ten times the fiat money it gets from the FED and lend it out.

Now go watch the purchasing power of your fiat paper money shrink before your eyes. Watch the price of your ham sammich rise. Somebody is robbing you, the inflation is making you poorer. You just need to figure out who it is. and why.the inflation is making you poorer. You just need to figure out who it is. and why.
bgz Offline
#62 Posted:
Joined: 07-29-2014
Posts: 13,023
He calls me a bad troll... ^ look at that wall of text.

Gold bait lol.
bgz Offline
#63 Posted:
Joined: 07-29-2014
Posts: 13,023
frankj1 wrote:
dolphin free?


Of course!
bgz Offline
#64 Posted:
Joined: 07-29-2014
Posts: 13,023
RayR wrote:
You just need to figure out who is making you poorer. You just need to figure out who it is. and why.


That's ez... my wife... she spends... a lot.

Haven't figured out the why.
RayR Offline
#65 Posted:
Joined: 07-20-2020
Posts: 8,796
bgz wrote:
That's ez... my wife... she spends... a lot.

Haven't figured out the why.


Maybe she's got a printing press in the basement churning out stimy money.
Tell her the FED doesn't like competition.
bgz Offline
#66 Posted:
Joined: 07-29-2014
Posts: 13,023
Uh...
Speyside Offline
#67 Posted:
Joined: 03-16-2015
Posts: 13,106
Female brain function.
rfenst Offline
#68 Posted:
Joined: 06-23-2007
Posts: 39,100
bgz wrote:
That's ez... my wife... she spends... a lot.

Haven't figured out the why.

Because that's what all women are genetically programed to do.
bgz Offline
#69 Posted:
Joined: 07-29-2014
Posts: 13,023
Damn programmers always making bugs.
rfenst Offline
#70 Posted:
Joined: 06-23-2007
Posts: 39,100
Retail sales rose in June in latest sign of recovery
Spending rebounded this spring and now fluctuating from month to month

The New York Times

Retail sales rose in June, the Commerce Department reported Friday, an unexpected jump that came as American consumers increased spending on dining out, clothes and gadgets.

The 0.6% increase in sales last month, which followed a drop in spending in May, highlighted the unevenness of the economic recovery. Even as overall sales rose, sales of cars and car parts and spending at building materials, furniture and sporting goods stores also declined.

“Consumers are being discriminatory on what they spend on,” said Gregory Daco, chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics. “They’re shying away from goods that they consumed in abundance during the pandemic and returning toward goods that they didn’t have access to during the pandemic.”

After falling to record lows about a year ago, sales rebounded this spring and are now fluctuating month to month, propelled by an uneven reopening of the economy. June’s sales were better than economists had forecast, but sales in coming months could be hampered by reactions to the fast-spreading delta variant of the coronavirus, rising prices and the end of some government benefits.

Weighing on sales last month was a shortage of computer chips that limited how many cars and trucks automakers could deliver to dealers. The production of motor vehicles and parts declined 6.6% in June, the Federal Reserve reported Thursday.

The shortage has also helped push up prices, in particular for used cars, which rose by 10.5% in June, the government reported earlier this week. The combination of low inventory and high prices is discouraging car buyers, economists say. Excluding cars and car parts, retail sales rose 1.3% in May.

The consumer price index rose at the fastest pace in 13 years in June as inflation accelerated, the Labor Department said earlier this week. A survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York also found that consumers expect higher inflation in the near term and over the course of several years.

[color=blue]“You’re starting to see a pickup in inflation expectations that might make consumers more cautious in terms of opening up their pocketbooks when they’re spending,” Beth Ann Bovino, U.S. chief economist at S&P Global Ratings Services, said before Friday’s release.


Spending is also shifting from durable goods, such as electronics and furniture, to leisure activities, Bovino said. Some of that spending is not reflected in Friday’s report.

“This report only captures a small sliver on consumer spending, on restaurants and bars, but it misses all the travel,” she said.

As the back-to-school season approaches in September, Bovino expects more parents, who might have relied on unemployment benefits and tended to their children while they pivoted to remote learning, to rejoin the workforce. That could help companies increase output and ease some of the shortages of supplies and products.
rfenst Offline
#71 Posted:
Joined: 06-23-2007
Posts: 39,100
Too Much Money Portends High Inflation
The Fed should pay attention to Milton Friedman’s wisdom

WSJ

June’s inflation index jumped 5.4% from a year ago, the highest reading since August 2008. The experts were surprised. Clearly, Federal Reserve watchers never bothered to consult Milton Friedman. Lost is a core Friedman dictum: “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.”

In his Feb. 23 testimony to Congress, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said that the growth in the money supply, specifically M2, “doesn’t really have important implications.” The experts, the press and the bond vigilantes were as quick to unlearn monetarism, if they ever had learned it, as Mr. Powell. Reporting about U.S. inflation rarely contains the words “money supply.” We are repeatedly told that the most recent upticks in inflation are anomalous and “transitory.”

Wrong. The inflation upticks aren’t temporary and were predictable, driven by an extraordinary explosion in the money supply. Since March 2020, the M2 has been growing at an average annualized rate of 23.9%—the fastest since World War II. There is so much money out there that banks don’t know what to do with it. Via reverse repurchase agreements, banks and money-market funds are lending money to the Fed to the tune of $860 billion. That’s unprecedented.

According to monetarism, asset-price inflation should have occurred with a lag of one to nine months. Then, with a lag of six to 18 months, economic activity should have started to pick up. Lastly, after a lag of 12 to 24 months, generalized inflation should have set in. That’s the standard monetarist sequence, and it’s been followed to a T.

To get a handle on what the recent money supply explosion implies for inflation, consider a monetarist model for determining national income. That famous model was displayed on Milton Friedman’s California license plates. It’s compact: MV=Py, where M is the money supply, V is the velocity of money (the speed at which it circulates), P is the price level, and y is real gross domestic product.

Plug numbers into the model and solve for M, and money supply (M2) should be growing at around 6% a year for the Fed to hit its inflation target of 2%. With M2 growing at nearly four times the “ideal” rate since March 2020, inflation is baked into the cake, and it’s likely to persist. By the end of the year, the year-over-year inflation rate will be at least 6% and possibly as high as 9%.

Some who like to throw cold water on monetarism argue that the velocity of money has collapsed and will mitigate the inflationary impact of the rapid growth of the money supply. While velocity did collapse with the onset of Covid, it’s on track to pick up until the end of 2024. Consequently, velocity will grease the monetary wheels. That’s why inflation might hit the high end of our forecast range.

Mr. Powell and his colleagues should start paying attention to the money supply. Money matters. Indeed, it dominates.


Mr. Greenwood is chief economist at Invesco in London. Mr. Hanke is a professor of applied economics at Johns Hopkins University.
rfenst Offline
#72 Posted:
Joined: 06-23-2007
Posts: 39,100
Red-Hot U.S. Economy Expected to Cool From Here
Growth likely hit a high point in the second quarter and will slow as the boosts from fiscal stimulus and reopenings fade, economists say

WSJ

The U.S. economy’s 2021 growth surge likely peaked in the spring, but a strong expansion is expected to continue into next year, say economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal.

Widespread business reopenings, rising vaccination rates and a big infusion of government pandemic aid this spring helped propel rapid gains in consumer spending—the economy’s main driver. But that burst of economic growth is starting to slow, economists say.

“We’ve moved into the more moderate phase of expansion,” said Ellen Zentner, chief U.S. economist at Morgan Stanley. “We’re past the peak for growth, but that doesn’t mean something more sinister is going on here and that we’re poised to then drop off sharply.”

Rather, economists expect the economy to continue growing solidly over the coming year, fueled by job gains, pent-up savings and continued fiscal support. In the longer term, they foresee the expansion gradually cooling down to a more stable post-pandemic pace.

Economists surveyed this month by the Journal, on average, estimated that the economy expanded at a 9.1% seasonally adjusted annual rate in the April-to-June period. That would mark the second-fastest pace since 1983, exceeded only by last summer’s rapid rebound, when businesses started to reopen after lockdowns and governments began easing pandemic-related restrictions.

Many economists also estimate U.S. gross domestic product surpassed its pre-pandemic levels in the second quarter.

The survey respondents see growth cooling to a 7% pace in the third quarter and drifting down to a 3.3% rate in the second quarter of 2022.

They forecast the economy to grow 6.9% this year, measured from the fourth quarter of last year to the same period of 2021, then declining to 3.2% next year and 2.3% in 2023.

With more moderate growth, the rates of job gains and inflation should ease as well, the economists said.

“It’s normal. You shouldn’t expect 9% growth forever,” said Michael Feroli, chief U.S. economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co. “We feel very confident that we’re going to see strongly above-trend growth in the second half of the year.”

After rising steadily since the fall, yields on 10-year Treasury notes have dipped slightly over the past three months as investors factor in the potential for weaker growth, said Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM.

Consumer spending climbed 5% in March after Congress and the White House enacted a $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package that sent $1,400 checks to many households. The money was reaching pocketbooks at the same time many people were getting vaccinated and venturing out more as service providers reopened their doors. Monthly spending increases have slowed since then as the initial stimulus effect fades.

“May was insane,” said Zach Schneider, co-owner of S&S Hardware in St. Paul, Minn., who estimated that sales that month were 17% to 19% higher than in May 2019.

“Not only were we increasing the visitors but we were also increasing our average transaction, getting a lot of people impulse shopping,” he said.

Sales have cooled off since, he said, “but year-over-year, we’re still tracking ahead.”

Inflation also jumped in the spring and early summer as household spending outpaced businesses’ ability to keep up. Consumer prices rose 5.4% in June from a year before, the fastest pace since 2008, the Labor Department reported.

What the Inflation of the 1970s Can Teach Us Today
The U.S. inflation rate reached a 13-year high recently, triggering a debate about whether the country is entering an inflationary period similar to the 1970s. WSJ’s Jon Hilsenrath looks at what consumers can expect next.
As growth slows, firms will have more time to find workers, work through order backlogs and increase production, though many supply-chain bottlenecks persist. The economists surveyed see inflation measured by the department’s consumer-price index gliding down to 4.1% in December from a year earlier and 2.5% by the end of 2022.

Several forces are likely to ensure economic growth remains strong in the coming quarters. For one, millions of individuals who are unemployed or not looking for work will likely find jobs, giving them income to spend. September could be a pivotal month, as schools reopen widely across the nation and expanded unemployment benefits expire nationwide.

Consumers also built up a large cash buffer during the pandemic. Americans were saving at an annualized rate of $2.3 trillion in May, nearly twice as much as they were saving in May 2019. While consumers have drawn on some of that money to pay off debt or book a vacation, there is room for more spending.

“You can’t eat out twice in a night,” said Steven Blitz, chief U.S. economist at TS Lombard. “Reopenings get people to spend money, but it all can’t be spent in one month.”

Federal stimulus, meanwhile, hasn’t entirely disappeared. The federal government on Thursday began sending monthly payments of up to $300 per child as part of an expanded child tax credit.

This new phase of the recovery comes with its own set of risks. Although many economists expect recent price pressures to be temporary, there is the possibility that costs for some goods and services push up inflation on a sustained basis.

Housing costs pose one such concern. Owners’ equivalent rents—the Labor Department’s estimate of what homeowners would have to pay each month if they were renting their own home—haven’t yet rebounded much. But some economists warn these prices could start rising briskly, reflecting recent rapid increases in home prices.

Another risk comes from the labor market, which has recovered more slowly than many economists anticipated earlier this year. The U.S. economy is still about 7 million jobs short of pre-pandemic levels, and some impediments to employment growth could be long-lasting.

Many Americans retired earlier than planned during the pandemic and will never return to the labor market. Others have been out of work for months, raising the risk their skills might have atrophied or employers might perceive they have. Mismatches between the industries and places where jobs are available and where unemployed people are searching could hinder hiring for months.

“I do worry a little bit about whether there will be some structural underemployment on the other side of all this,” said Mr. Feroli.
RayR Offline
#73 Posted:
Joined: 07-20-2020
Posts: 8,796
Bidenomics is just more of the same "vulgar Keynesianism" that Robert Higgs disparaged back in 2009 when he slammed "The Obama administration’s ambitious plans for government action on many fronts."

Quote:
Most of the people who purport to possess expertise about the economy rely on a common set of presuppositions and modes of thinking. I call this pseudo-intellectual mishmash vulgar Keynesianism. It’s the same claptrap that has passed for economic wisdom in this country for more than fifty years and seems to have originated in the first edition of Paul Samuelson’s Economics (1948), the best-selling economics textbook of all time and the one from which a plurality of several generations of college students acquired whatever they knew about economic analysis. Long ago, this view seeped into educated discourse and writing in the news media and in politics and established itself as an orthodoxy.

Unfortunately, this way of thinking about the economy’s operation, particularly its overall fluctuations, is a tissue of errors of both commission and omission. Most unfortunate have been the policy implications derived from this mode of thinking, above all the notion that the government can and should use fiscal and monetary policies to control the macroeconomy and stabilize its fluctuations. Despite having originated more than half a century ago, this view seems to be as vital in 2009 as it was in 1949.


The Bidenomics brain trust exists in an alternate reality, which now states that by the regime spending trillions more dollars in counterfeit FED loot is an "investment" that will lower prices.Glare I wouldn't bet the farm on that rubbish.

Would you believe this squinting teleprompter reading demagogue?

Biden insists inflation is 'expected' and only 'temporary' and says his multi-trillion dollar spending packages will LOWER prices in the long run after a record-breaking spike of 5.4% in June

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9803407/Biden-insists-inflation-expected-temporary-insists-spending-LOWER-prices.html
rfenst Offline
#74 Posted:
Joined: 06-23-2007
Posts: 39,100
Intel’s CEO said the global chip shortage could stretch into 2023.

WSJ

It could take one or two years to get back to a reasonable supply-and-demand balance in the industry, Pat Gelsinger said. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, the world’s largest contract chip maker, and Intel are adding new production facilities, though some of that capacity won’t be ready for about two more years. Separately, semiconductor company Texas Instruments on Thursday signaled a likely slowdown in growth in the third quarter.
rfenst Offline
#75 Posted:
Joined: 06-23-2007
Posts: 39,100
States that cut unemployment early aren’t seeing a hiring boom, but who gets hired is changing

States that scaled back unemployment aid have seen a decline in teen employment and an increase in workers over 25, early evidence finds

WAPO

The 20 Republican-led states that reduced unemployment benefits in June did not see an immediate spike in overall hiring, but early evidence suggests something did change: The teen hiring boom slowed in those states, and workers 25 and older returned to work more quickly.

A new analysis by payroll processor Gusto, conducted for The Washington Post, found that small restaurants and hospitality businesses in states such as Missouri, which ended the extra unemployment benefits early, saw a jump in hiring of workers over age 25. The uptick in hiring of older workers was roughly offset by the slower hiring of teens in these states. In contrast, restaurants and hospitality businesses in states such as Kansas, where the full benefits remain, have been hiring a lot more teenagers who are less experienced and less likely to qualify for unemployment aid.

The findings suggest hiring is likely to remain difficult for some time, especially in the lower-paying hospitality sector. The analysis also adds perspective to the teen hiring boom, revealing that more generous unemployment payments played a role in keeping more experienced workers on the sidelines, forcing employers to turn to younger workers. It indicates teen hiring could slow further in September, as unemployment benefits are reduced across the country and young people return to school.


Does everything really cost more? Find out with our inflation quiz.

There’s a growing trend in helpwanted ads of lowering the age and experience requirements, especially in the hospitality sector, according to QuickHire, a recruiting firm in Wichita.

Katrina Weiss has seen these trends play out at her restaurant, named 715 after its address in Lawrence, Kansas. Before the pandemic, her youngest employee was 18 years old. Now, her youngest employee is 15, and she has many teens working as hostesses, assistant servers and table bussers. Weiss said she has been inundated with applications from teens this summer, but few from workers in their 20s or 30s.

Why some Americans are still hesitant to get back to work
With stimulus payments and additional unemployment, some workers are reassessing when and how they’ll get back to work as the economy emerges from crisis. (Mahlia Posey/The Washington Post)
“We’ve definitely lowered that minimum age,” said Weiss, a part owner of 715 who has worked there since it opened in 2009.

The federal government is providing unemployed workers an extra $300 a week through Sept. 6, roughly doubling how much the typical unemployed American would otherwise receive in aid. Yet, federal benefits have ignited political debates, because hiring in recent months has been weaker than expected. Republicans say the enhanced payments are playing a major role in keeping workers at home, while Democrats argue the money is a needed lifeline to help people still unable to return to work or those hoping to find a better job.

Welcome to the year of wage hikes. Workers are returning — to higher-paying firms.

So far, early data suggests that cutting the benefits given to Americans who lost their jobs during the covid-19 pandemic has not led to a big pickup in hiring. The 20 states that reduced benefits in June had the same pace of hiring as the mostly Democrat-led states that kept the extra $300-a-week unemployment payments in place, according to state-level data from the Labor Department. Survey data from the Census Bureau and Gusto’s small-business payroll data show similar results.

Many economists and business owners say other issues such as health concerns, child-care problems and workers reassessing their career choices appear to be larger factors keeping them home.

“If what we want is a speedy economic recovery, ending unemployment insurance is not the silver bullet,” Gusto economist Luke Pardue said. But, he added, “unemployment insurance was at least partially a cause of the boom in teen employment.”

The economy isn’t going back to February 2020. Fundamental shifts have occurred.

There’s a growing trend in help-wanted ads of lowering the age and experience requirements, especially in the hospitality sector, according to QuickHire, a recruiting firm in Wichita.

“Almost all of the restaurants that we work with are willing to hire kids as young as 16 now,” said Deborah Gladney, co-founder of QuickHire. “We saw a big shift in May when we started seeing a lot of restaurants drop their age requirements and offer bonuses.”

The teen unemployment rate is at its lowest level since the 1950s, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The more generous unemployment benefits allowed older workers to stay home, care for children or relatives, and avoid the deadly coronavirus. Teenagers often don’t qualify for unemployment assistance, because many weren’t working pre-pandemic, and they are often still supported by parents or guardians.

At 715, Weiss and her business partners raised wages for all employees and began offering signing and referral bonuses. Even with those changes, the bulk of their applicants were teens. Weiss is hopeful that might change in September as more college students return to the University of Kansas and the unemployment benefits are reduced, but she is not banking on it.

Retail workers are quitting at record rates for higher-paying work: ‘My life isn’t worth a dead-end job’


“We are only open five days a week right now. We’re only doing dinner shifts. The main reason for that is we don’t have the staff to expand our hours,” she said. She has been telling customers that lunch and brunch probably won’t return until 2022.

The Kansas-Missouri state line provides an interesting test case for what happens when one state changes its unemployment policies. When Missouri Gov. Mike Parson announced in May the state would end federal expanded unemployment assistance programs as of June 12, the Republican said it “ensures that we will fill existing jobs, as well as the thousands of new jobs coming to our state as businesses continue to invest and expand in Missouri.”

So far, there hasn’t been a major hiring boom in Missouri. Business owners who operate in both Missouri and Kansas told The Post that Missouri’s reduction of jobless benefits had a small impact on hiring. Total employment in Missouri rose by 4,200 jobs in June with a slight increase in hospitality jobs, according to the Labor Department. Across the border in Kansas, overall employment increased by 8,100 in June and was flat in the hospitality industry.

Restaurant owners say that while unemployment benefits may be keeping some workers at home, their biggest issue is that so many workers are rethinking their lives post-pandemic and may not want to return to grueling restaurant work.

“Employees went out and found other industries. And that’s been a bigger problem than just the unemployment insurance. Getting restaurant hospitality workers back to our industry has been a challenge for almost every restaurant in the Midwest,” said Kevin Timmons, owner of sports bar Nick and Jake’s and former president of the Greater Kansas City Restaurant Association.

Some businesses that operate in both Kansas and Missouri say they have noticed more serious applicants from the Missouri side, especially in the hospitality industry.

One recruiting firm that works in both states has noted some hiring differences. Ken Meeks, chief executive of hospitality-recruiting firm ResourceOne, said he has been frustrated by the number of “ghost applicants” in Kansas, in which people apply but when his firm calls, texts and emails them to follow up, they say they still haven’t found a job but they aren’t interested in talking further. He said the situation has been a lot better in Missouri since the unemployment benefits were cut.

“We’ve seen a bump in applications over on the Missouri side in servers, bartenders and cooks coming back into the fold,” Meeks said. “No one was against unemployment when restaurants were closed. But now the jobs actually exist.”

Lately in Missouri, Meeks has also seen restaurants scaling back pay. Jobs that were paying $18 an hour now pay $15, but “employees are taking it because they’ve lost leverage on the Missouri side,” Meeks said.

The Gusto analysis also noted that among more experienced workers who returned to the workforce as benefits ended, people who had worked for a company before the pandemic were especially likely to return to their prior employer when states announced benefits would end early.

For policymakers, it’s a difficult balance figuring out when to scale back unemployment insurance for the nation’s 9.5 million unemployed. As the delta variant of the coronavirus flares up, some workers are reluctant to return to jobs in which they encounter a lot of people.

Economist Arindrajit Dube of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst found that a lot more people reported having a hard time paying their bills in states where unemployment benefits were slashed in June. He analyzed Census Bureau survey data and found a roughly 60 percent drop in the number of people on unemployment in the states that ended the extra $300 and the aid for self-employed and gig workers in June, but no increase in employment.

“There is evidence that the reduced UI benefits increased self-reported hardship in paying for regular expenses,” Dube wrote, adding, “Of course, this evidence is still early.”

A restaurant owner asked President Biden at the recent CNN Town Hall in Ohio about what the White House is doing to help businesses hire. Biden reiterated his stance that he does not think unemployment insurance is holding workers back, but even if it is, the extra payments are soon coming to an end.

“I see no evidence [unemployment insurance] had any serious impact on it. But you can argue it. Let’s assume it did. It’s coming to an end,” Biden said.

In Kansas City, Mo., restaurant owner Jerry Rauschelbach was optimistic that the cut in unemployment benefits would help drive more talented workers back to his industry. He has been looking for another manager for Arthur Bryant’s Barbeque for six months.

In the two weeks after the unemployment money scaled back in Missouri, Rauschelbach said he was flooded with applications for the manager position, but few had worked in the industry before.

“The type of employee applying is not what I’m used to,” Rauschelbach said. “The people applying are grasping for any job. I’m looking for somebody who is committed to the industry. It’s a hard life.”

The manager position pays about $50,000 a year and remains unfilled. Like many, Rauschelbach described this summer as both the best and worst of times — business is “hitting numbers we haven’t seen in years” as customers return and the mail-order meat business he started during the pandemic remains strong, but his staff of 20 is stretched.

He still thinks the generous unemployment benefits hurt hiring, but his recent experience has also caused him to realize a lot of Americans are reassessing their careers and no longer want to work 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays.
rfenst Offline
#76 Posted:
Joined: 06-23-2007
Posts: 39,100
States that cut unemployment early aren’t seeing a hiring boom, but who gets hired is changing

States that scaled back unemployment aid have seen a decline in teen employment and an increase in workers over 25, early evidence finds

WAPO

The 20 Republican-led states that reduced unemployment benefits in June did not see an immediate spike in overall hiring, but early evidence suggests something did change: The teen hiring boom slowed in those states, and workers 25 and older returned to work more quickly.

A new analysis by payroll processor Gusto, conducted for The Washington Post, found that small restaurants and hospitality businesses in states such as Missouri, which ended the extra unemployment benefits early, saw a jump in hiring of workers over age 25. The uptick in hiring of older workers was roughly offset by the slower hiring of teens in these states. In contrast, restaurants and hospitality businesses in states such as Kansas, where the full benefits remain, have been hiring a lot more teenagers who are less experienced and less likely to qualify for unemployment aid.

The findings suggest hiring is likely to remain difficult for some time, especially in the lower-paying hospitality sector. The analysis also adds perspective to the teen hiring boom, revealing that more generous unemployment payments played a role in keeping more experienced workers on the sidelines, forcing employers to turn to younger workers. It indicates teen hiring could slow further in September, as unemployment benefits are reduced across the country and young people return to school.


Does everything really cost more? Find out with our inflation quiz.

There’s a growing trend in helpwanted ads of lowering the age and experience requirements, especially in the hospitality sector, according to QuickHire, a recruiting firm in Wichita.

Katrina Weiss has seen these trends play out at her restaurant, named 715 after its address in Lawrence, Kansas. Before the pandemic, her youngest employee was 18 years old. Now, her youngest employee is 15, and she has many teens working as hostesses, assistant servers and table bussers. Weiss said she has been inundated with applications from teens this summer, but few from workers in their 20s or 30s.

Why some Americans are still hesitant to get back to work
With stimulus payments and additional unemployment, some workers are reassessing when and how they’ll get back to work as the economy emerges from crisis. (Mahlia Posey/The Washington Post)
“We’ve definitely lowered that minimum age,” said Weiss, a part owner of 715 who has worked there since it opened in 2009.

The federal government is providing unemployed workers an extra $300 a week through Sept. 6, roughly doubling how much the typical unemployed American would otherwise receive in aid. Yet, federal benefits have ignited political debates, because hiring in recent months has been weaker than expected. Republicans say the enhanced payments are playing a major role in keeping workers at home, while Democrats argue the money is a needed lifeline to help people still unable to return to work or those hoping to find a better job.

Welcome to the year of wage hikes. Workers are returning — to higher-paying firms.

So far, early data suggests that cutting the benefits given to Americans who lost their jobs during the covid-19 pandemic has not led to a big pickup in hiring. The 20 states that reduced benefits in June had the same pace of hiring as the mostly Democrat-led states that kept the extra $300-a-week unemployment payments in place, according to state-level data from the Labor Department. Survey data from the Census Bureau and Gusto’s small-business payroll data show similar results.

Many economists and business owners say other issues such as health concerns, child-care problems and workers reassessing their career choices appear to be larger factors keeping them home.

“If what we want is a speedy economic recovery, ending unemployment insurance is not the silver bullet,” Gusto economist Luke Pardue said. But, he added, “unemployment insurance was at least partially a cause of the boom in teen employment.”

The economy isn’t going back to February 2020. Fundamental shifts have occurred.

There’s a growing trend in help-wanted ads of lowering the age and experience requirements, especially in the hospitality sector, according to QuickHire, a recruiting firm in Wichita.

“Almost all of the restaurants that we work with are willing to hire kids as young as 16 now,” said Deborah Gladney, co-founder of QuickHire. “We saw a big shift in May when we started seeing a lot of restaurants drop their age requirements and offer bonuses.”

The teen unemployment rate is at its lowest level since the 1950s, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The more generous unemployment benefits allowed older workers to stay home, care for children or relatives, and avoid the deadly coronavirus. Teenagers often don’t qualify for unemployment assistance, because many weren’t working pre-pandemic, and they are often still supported by parents or guardians.

At 715, Weiss and her business partners raised wages for all employees and began offering signing and referral bonuses. Even with those changes, the bulk of their applicants were teens. Weiss is hopeful that might change in September as more college students return to the University of Kansas and the unemployment benefits are reduced, but she is not banking on it.

Retail workers are quitting at record rates for higher-paying work: ‘My life isn’t worth a dead-end job’


“We are only open five days a week right now. We’re only doing dinner shifts. The main reason for that is we don’t have the staff to expand our hours,” she said. She has been telling customers that lunch and brunch probably won’t return until 2022.

The Kansas-Missouri state line provides an interesting test case for what happens when one state changes its unemployment policies. When Missouri Gov. Mike Parson announced in May the state would end federal expanded unemployment assistance programs as of June 12, the Republican said it “ensures that we will fill existing jobs, as well as the thousands of new jobs coming to our state as businesses continue to invest and expand in Missouri.”

So far, there hasn’t been a major hiring boom in Missouri. Business owners who operate in both Missouri and Kansas told The Post that Missouri’s reduction of jobless benefits had a small impact on hiring. Total employment in Missouri rose by 4,200 jobs in June with a slight increase in hospitality jobs, according to the Labor Department. Across the border in Kansas, overall employment increased by 8,100 in June and was flat in the hospitality industry.

Restaurant owners say that while unemployment benefits may be keeping some workers at home, their biggest issue is that so many workers are rethinking their lives post-pandemic and may not want to return to grueling restaurant work.

“Employees went out and found other industries. And that’s been a bigger problem than just the unemployment insurance. Getting restaurant hospitality workers back to our industry has been a challenge for almost every restaurant in the Midwest,” said Kevin Timmons, owner of sports bar Nick and Jake’s and former president of the Greater Kansas City Restaurant Association.

Some businesses that operate in both Kansas and Missouri say they have noticed more serious applicants from the Missouri side, especially in the hospitality industry.

One recruiting firm that works in both states has noted some hiring differences. Ken Meeks, chief executive of hospitality-recruiting firm ResourceOne, said he has been frustrated by the number of “ghost applicants” in Kansas, in which people apply but when his firm calls, texts and emails them to follow up, they say they still haven’t found a job but they aren’t interested in talking further. He said the situation has been a lot better in Missouri since the unemployment benefits were cut.

“We’ve seen a bump in applications over on the Missouri side in servers, bartenders and cooks coming back into the fold,” Meeks said. “No one was against unemployment when restaurants were closed. But now the jobs actually exist.”

Lately in Missouri, Meeks has also seen restaurants scaling back pay. Jobs that were paying $18 an hour now pay $15, but “employees are taking it because they’ve lost leverage on the Missouri side,” Meeks said.

The Gusto analysis also noted that among more experienced workers who returned to the workforce as benefits ended, people who had worked for a company before the pandemic were especially likely to return to their prior employer when states announced benefits would end early.

For policymakers, it’s a difficult balance figuring out when to scale back unemployment insurance for the nation’s 9.5 million unemployed. As the delta variant of the coronavirus flares up, some workers are reluctant to return to jobs in which they encounter a lot of people.

Economist Arindrajit Dube of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst found that a lot more people reported having a hard time paying their bills in states where unemployment benefits were slashed in June. He analyzed Census Bureau survey data and found a roughly 60 percent drop in the number of people on unemployment in the states that ended the extra $300 and the aid for self-employed and gig workers in June, but no increase in employment.

“There is evidence that the reduced UI benefits increased self-reported hardship in paying for regular expenses,” Dube wrote, adding, “Of course, this evidence is still early.”

A restaurant owner asked President Biden at the recent CNN Town Hall in Ohio about what the White House is doing to help businesses hire. Biden reiterated his stance that he does not think unemployment insurance is holding workers back, but even if it is, the extra payments are soon coming to an end.

“I see no evidence [unemployment insurance] had any serious impact on it. But you can argue it. Let’s assume it did. It’s coming to an end,” Biden said.

In Kansas City, Mo., restaurant owner Jerry Rauschelbach was optimistic that the cut in unemployment benefits would help drive more talented workers back to his industry. He has been looking for another manager for Arthur Bryant’s Barbeque for six months.

In the two weeks after the unemployment money scaled back in Missouri, Rauschelbach said he was flooded with applications for the manager position, but few had worked in the industry before.

“The type of employee applying is not what I’m used to,” Rauschelbach said. “The people applying are grasping for any job. I’m looking for somebody who is committed to the industry. It’s a hard life.”

The manager position pays about $50,000 a year and remains unfilled. Like many, Rauschelbach described this summer as both the best and worst of times — business is “hitting numbers we haven’t seen in years” as customers return and the mail-order meat business he started during the pandemic remains strong, but his staff of 20 is stretched.

He still thinks the generous unemployment benefits hurt hiring, but his recent experience has also caused him to realize a lot of Americans are reassessing their careers and no longer want to work 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays.
Mr. Jones Offline
#77 Posted:
Joined: 06-12-2005
Posts: 19,359
RFENST...

Have you been food shopping lately?

Have you bought gasoline lately?

Have you bought any construction materials lately?

Even Walmart is RAISING PRICES...
Target 🎯 is raising prices...
The U.S.P.S. IS raising postal rates...
Fed ex is going up...
Local taxes are going up...
State taxes are going up...

Inflation is rampant...
In the North East...
Mr. Jones Offline
#78 Posted:
Joined: 06-12-2005
Posts: 19,359
Not to mention FIREARMS AMMO...
OR GUNS IN GENERAL....

I WENT to a new gun store in willow street pa the other day...
Their used guns were priced 3 times what they were in 2018 or 2019...
Their new pistols were all over $500 , closer to $1,000...
His ammo was quadruple to quintupled from 2019

Inflation?
What inflation


It's HYPER INFLATION NOW
rfenst Offline
#79 Posted:
Joined: 06-23-2007
Posts: 39,100
Mr. Jones wrote:
RFENST...

Have you been food shopping lately?Yes.

Have you bought gasoline lately? Yes.

Have you bought any construction materials lately? No.

Even Walmart is RAISING PRICES...
Target 🎯 is raising prices...
The U.S.P.S. IS raising postal rates...
Fed ex is going up...
Local taxes are going up...
State taxes are going up...

Inflation is rampant...
In the North East...

It is being referred to as "transitory inflation", which means the current period of high inflation should be short-lived. I won't believe it until I see it. Many different factors are at play. June figures came out today or will tomorrow...
Speyside Offline
#80 Posted:
Joined: 03-16-2015
Posts: 13,106
Jonsey, we are seeing the effect of Modern Monetary Theory being used in real life. Now it is Modern Monetary Policy. Just my opinion. Businesses are afraid that a massive devaluation of the dollar is looming. BGZ is probably right wait for a low fluctuation in bitcoin and buy. I can't believe I just said that.
rfenst Offline
#81 Posted:
Joined: 06-23-2007
Posts: 39,100
A Key Gauge of Future Inflation Is Easing
After soaring since October, public and bond-market expectations of inflation have fallen back, suggesting sustained higher prices are less likely

WSJ

One of the most important signals of future inflation has begun to ease in the past month, a development that should reassure the Federal Reserve in its prediction that the recent inflation surge will prove largely temporary.

That signal is so-called inflation expectations: what businesses, consumers, workers and investors expect inflation to be over the next one to 10 years. Because such expectations can be self-fulfilling, economists consider them key to where inflation is going.

Expectations are tracked through a range of surveys and market-based measures, and most are telling the same story. After rising sharply from October through May, they have now begun to ease.

The median expectation of inflation during the next year for consumers surveyed by the University of Michigan shot to 4.8% this month, the highest since August 2008. However, consumers’ one-year expectations are strongly influenced by today’s inflation rate, now a 13-year high of 5.4%. A more-reassuring message comes from their expectations for five to 10 years from now: That came in at 2.9% in early July, down slightly from 3% in May and close to the average of 2.8% in surveys from 2000 to 2019.

Bond investors also don’t seem to be betting on a sustained jump in inflation, based on the “break-even inflation rate”—the difference between the yield on regular Treasury bonds and on inflation-indexed bonds. The break-even rate over the next five years has dropped 0.19 percentage point since mid-May; the rate over the following five years has dropped 0.21 point.

Moreover, since January the five-year break-even inflation rate has been higher than the 10-year rate, the first time that has happened consistently since 2008. “What the markets are saying is, ‘We think there’s inflation in the near term, but eventually it’s going to ease and go back to [the Fed’s] 2% target—maybe be a little above, but it will certainly not remain elevated,’”
said Kathy Bostjancic, chief U.S. financial economist at Oxford Economics.

The U.S. inflation rate reached a 13-year high recently, triggering a debate about whether the country is entering an inflationary period similar to the 1970s. WSJ’s Jon Hilsenrath looks at what consumers can expect next.

Business inflation expectations have declined, too, since May, as tracked by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s monthly survey of around 300 businesses in six states. Companies expected 2.8% inflation a year from now in early July, on average, down from 3% in June, though up from the average of 1.9% from 2012 to 2019. The survey measures businesses’ expectations of their own costs, which may not translate to selling prices.

In theory, individuals and businesses set prices and wages based on what they expect inflation to be in the future. Thus, expectations can be self-fulfilling. “Consumers say, ‘Inflation is going up—I’m going to have to pay higher prices,’ and go to their employers and ask for higher wages,” Ms. Bostjancic said. Businesses see that rising inflation gives them room to raise prices and grant raises, recouping those increased costs by charging more, she said. “It’s intuitive but also borne out by empirical evidence.”

In the Fed’s economic models, inflation is largely determined by slack—how much labor and business capacity is going unused—and inflation expectations. “There is broad agreement that achieving price stability on a sustainable basis requires that long-run inflation expectations be well anchored at the rate of inflation consistent with the price-stability goal,” said Richard Clarida, the Fed’s vice chairman, in an April speech.

In the 1960s, economists thought there was a trade-off between inflation and unemployment—a relationship called the Phillips curve—and policy makers could lower unemployment by allowing higher inflation. But scholars such as the late Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman argued that workers would respond to higher inflation by expecting, and receiving, higher wages, which would tend to push unemployment back up to its old level. That is what happened in the 1970s: Unemployment went up but inflation didn’t go down, because expectations were high.

Conversely, low, stable expected inflation over the 10 years before the coronavirus pandemic may explain why the Fed struggled to bring inflation consistently up to its 2% target even as unemployment fell to historic lows. Last year, inflation expectations plummeted as the economy sank into recession. But as the economy rebounded, so did expectations, to above pre-pandemic levels.

That could be good news for the Fed, said Tim Duy, chief U.S. economist at SGH Macro Advisors, because it could help the Fed keep inflation on its 2% target. (Based on historical patterns, expected inflation slightly above 2% would still be consistent with actual inflation at 2%.)

The Fed’s staff has compiled a “Common Inflation Expectations” index from 21 measures of inflation expectations, including short- and long-term indexes from consumers, markets, businesses and professional forecasters. That index in the second quarter was at levels that prevailed in 2014, a time when inflation was modest, the Fed indicated in minutes of its June meeting.

But some economists worry inflation expectations could rise steadily from here. Trillions of dollars in federal pandemic relief and ample household savings have helped buoy demand. That, along with pandemic-related supply chain disruptions, is giving businesses more pricing power than they have had in decades, said Joel Naroff, chief economist at Naroff Economics LLC.

“What that could lead to is extended periods of raising prices rather than fear that if they raise prices they’ll lose market share,” he said.

That fear may indeed be receding. A year ago, raising prices was the last thing Aaron Pool wanted to think about. When the founder and co-owner of the Gadzooks Enchiladas and Soup restaurants chain in Arizona raised the price for two enchiladas by 25 cents in 2013, he faced customer backlash.

Emerging from lockdown in the spring of 2020, a state minimum-wage law and higher commodity and delivery costs pushed him to raise prices. Yet demand stayed strong.

“I believe inflation is real because customers haven’t said a peep about it,” Mr. Pool said. “It’s $9.25 for two enchiladas right now. We joke we could probably raise it to $13 and people would pay it.”

Anmol Sahai, of Brooklyn, N.Y., noticed prices at restaurants and bars in the city shooting up a few months ago. The price for a morning Uber soared to more than $40, nearly double the pre-pandemic rate.

“I feel like May was the first time I was like, ‘Oh my god, this is getting out of hand,’” said Mr. Sahai, who is 25 years old and works as a paralegal.

In his case, though, higher inflation hasn’t yet changed his behavior in a way that suggests his expectations are becoming unanchored. He cut back on dining out and now takes the subway to work. But while Mr. Sahai is planning to ask for a raise soon, he doesn’t connect that to higher costs.

“I’ll ask for more, regardless, but how much will [inflation] influence that? Not much,” he said. “I think of them differently: There’s my job on one side and how much I spend on the other.”
DrMaddVibe Offline
#82 Posted:
Joined: 10-21-2000
Posts: 55,301
Do you really believe enough in that article Robert?

Inflation is only going to go up.
rfenst Offline
#83 Posted:
Joined: 06-23-2007
Posts: 39,100
I believe the numbers are accurate. Who knows what will really happen? I will believe it when I see it as I stated above.
zitotczito Offline
#84 Posted:
Joined: 08-21-2006
Posts: 6,441
Hey, inflation only needs to stay high for the next 3 months for my SS COLA. Then it can go down.
bgz Offline
#85 Posted:
Joined: 07-29-2014
Posts: 13,023
Buy high sell low!
tonygraz Offline
#86 Posted:
Joined: 08-11-2008
Posts: 20,175
I think I heard that the SS Cola sunk last night. Some say the Captain had too much coke.
rfenst Offline
#87 Posted:
Joined: 06-23-2007
Posts: 39,100
Will continuing inflation kill the recovery?

Tribune Opinion

This spring, I wrote about how consumers and investors alike should prepare for inflation and then two months later, I wondered whether high prices would persist. So far, the answer to that question is a resounding “at least for a while.”

The Consumer Price Index (CPI), which measures what people pay for goods and services, soared by 5.4% in June from a year ago, the strongest annual pace since August 2008, when crude oil spiked above $100 a barrel. The core CPI, which strips out the volatile food and energy components, jumped up 4.5% from a year ago, a 30-year high.

While these numbers are eye-popping, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell does not seem particularly stressed. In his recent testimony before Congress, he said that inflation “has been higher than we’ve expected and a little bit more persistent.” But he also reiterated that the gang at the central bank believe that much of the price surge is due to “transitory” factors.


One argument for a chunk of the price increase being temporary is that the current inflation data compare where we are today with the depressed numbers from the pandemic last year, when the economy shut down and prices plunged. But Powell noted that the economy has run headfirst into a “perfect storm of high demand and low supply.”

He’s right, of course, because as the economy has reopened from the COVID-shutdown, salons and tr consumer demand is red-hot. With $2 trillion in excess savings, we have collectively ditched our paper towel and disinfectant spending and replaced it with all those fun things we couldn’t do for 16 months, like dining in restaurants, visitingaveling. The big question, according to Capital Economics, “is whether the prices of things like hotel rooms and airfares simply return to pre-pandemic levels or, as we’ve seen with car rentals, whether pent-up demand will cause a temporary overshoot.”
Economists concede that supply chain issues could remain with us longer than they thought earlier this year. Two examples are lumber futures, which have fallen by nearly 70% from the pandemic peak of more than $1,700, but remain well-above pre-pandemic levels, and semiconductors, where a global shortage persists. The latter has caused motor

vehicle production to stall and, as a result, used vehicle prices are now a whopping 40% above the pre-pandemic levels.
Adding to the inflationary pressure are wages, which are rising. In a rare, Onion-esque sarcastic headline, the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute wrote, “Newsflash: Higher pay attracts workers.” While some companies can absorb higher employee costs, others are passing them along to consumers, which economist Diane Swonk of Grant Thornton says could mean that “some of the inflation we are experiencing could linger.”


Even if monthly inflation were to slow from here, price pressures could persist into the end of this year, which could force the Federal Reserve to act sooner, rather than later. The consensus view among investors is that the central bank will begin reducing bond purchases as soon as the fourth quarter. However, if inflation is sticky, there will be mounting pressure for officials to act more aggressively by raising interest rates, which could dampen economic growth. While a rise in rates is unlikely to cause a recession, higher rates could shave growth to around 6.5% or less this year (after contracting by 3.5% in 2020), which would be lower than earlier estimates of more than 7%.
rfenst Offline
#88 Posted:
Joined: 06-23-2007
Posts: 39,100
U.S. Median Home Price Hit New High in June
Median price rose to $363,300 as sales increased 1.4% on strong demand

WSJ

Continued strong demand pushed the median U.S. home price to a record high in June, though the national house-buying frenzy cooled slightly as supply ticked higher...

Existing-home sales rose 1.4% in June from the prior month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.86 million, the National Association of Realtors said Thursday. June sales rose 22.9% from a year earlier.

The median existing-home price rose to $363,300, in June, up 23.4% from a year earlier, setting a record high, NAR said, extending steady price increases amid limited inventory.

Separate figures on the labor market showed that the number of people receiving jobless benefits fell to the lowest level since early in the pandemic as states withdrew from participation in federal pandemic relief. First-time applications, meanwhile, rose as supply constraints persisted in the auto industry.

The housing-market boom is easing slightly, as rising prices are prompting more homeowners to list their houses for sale. Homes sold in June received four offers on average, down from five offers the previous month, said Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist.

But the number of homes for sale remains far lower than normal, and robust demand due to ultralow mortgage-interest rates is expected to continue pushing home prices higher.

As more homes come on the market, they are quickly snapped up by buyers, said Robert Frick, corporate economist at Navy Federal Credit Union.

“Demand is trumping everything,” he said. “Higher inventory isn’t going to take the brakes off price increases.”

Many homes are selling above listing price and receiving multiple offers. The typical home sold in June was on the market for 17 days, holding at a record low, NAR said...

There were 1.25 million homes for sale at the end of June, up 3.3% from May and down 18.8% from June 2020. At the current sales pace, there was a 2.6-month supply of homes on the market at the end of June.

Market watchers expect the housing frenzy to continue to cool in the coming months, as the number of homes for sale increases and high prices force some buyers out of the market.

“I don’t believe you’ll see the kinds of [price] increases you’ve seen in the last 12 months,” said Sheryl Palmer, chief executive of home builder Taylor Morrison Home Corp. “That’s not sustainable.”

First-time buyers or those who can only afford small down payments are struggling the most to compete. More than half of existing-home buyers in June who used mortgages to buy a property put at least 20% down, according to a NAR survey. Buyers are also making their offers stand out in this competitive market by agreeing to buy houses without contract terms that typically protect buyers, such as inspection requirements...

Existing-home sales rose the most month-over-month in the Midwest, up 3.1%, and in the Northeast, up 2.8%.

Sales were especially strong at the high end of the market. Sales of homes that were priced at more than $1 million more than doubled in June compared with a year earlier, according to NAR.

Building activity has increased due to the strong demand, but home builders are limited by labor availability, land supply and material costs. A measure of U.S. home-builder confidence declined in July, the National Association of Home Builders said this week.

Housing starts, a measure of U.S. home-building, rose 6.3% in June from May, the Commerce Department said earlier this week. Residential permits, which can be a bellwether for future home construction, fell 5.1%.[/color]
RayR Offline
#89 Posted:
Joined: 07-20-2020
Posts: 8,796
So when do you predict the next housing bubble will burst?
rfenst Offline
#90 Posted:
Joined: 06-23-2007
Posts: 39,100
Air conditioner shortage could mean a long wait to cool down

Orlando Sentinel

When Greg Cason’s auxiliary air conditioner for his master bedroom went out, he was happy it was November. Since the weather was getting cool, he didn’t mind being told he’d have to wait for a new one. “I assumed we were talking weeks, not months,” Cason said.

Cason’s new unit didn’t arrive until March. This was the longest Cason, 57, recalls ever having waited to replace an A/C unit for the Orlando home he’s lived in for 25 years. He’s grateful that it at least came in “before it got hot,” the military-training programmer said.

Just like cars and other manufactured items, air conditioning equipment is in short supply because of the pandemic.

Closed factories, a lack of delivery drivers and more people working from home are putting the squeeze on getting new units in Florida and around the country, leaving some customers sweltering.
David Hill, owner of Central Florida-based Certified Climate Control, says depending upon what people are looking for, wait times now can range from three weeks to six months. For some parts, he says he’s been told by manufacturers, “They don’t like giving people dates. They’ve told some customers six months, and they aren’t sure they’re going to make those dates.”

Hill says people in the industry saw this coming last year. “As soon as they started closing factories and telling people they had to stay home, we knew that was going to lead to a shortage,” he said.


Last summer, many repair shops still had inventory from the previous year, so most customers probably didn’t notice the drop.

“There were some limited shortages last year,” said Brian Hastings, owner of 4 Seasons Air Conditioning and Heating in Orlando. “But they were very short-lived. It was not long-term like we’re seeing.”

Factory closings started the first wave of slowdowns in production, but the problems cascaded. Next came a lack of drivers returning to work. Manufacturers have told Hastings, “We’ve got trucks full of product but we can’t get drivers to pick up these trailers,” he said.

Trane, a major A/C manufacturer, had a plant partially collapse under heavy snow during the winter storm in Texas this February. And, as with many other products, air conditioner thermostats need microchips, which are also in short supply this year. Then came the heatwave in the Pacific Northwest, which diverted a lot of supply to a region that usually doesn’t have much demand.

Offices closing and sending people to work from home might also be responsible for a spike. Hill says some people will tolerate a broken air conditioner if it’s cool enough at night when they are home.

“Suddenly, they’re home all day and they say, ‘I’ve got to get this fixed now,’ ” he said.

Hill also specifies that demand spikes are nothing new. It’s the supply side that’s causing the real problem, he says, and he doesn’t know how long these issues will last.

The shortage has caused manufacturers to raise their prices three times already this year. Hastings sits on the board for the local chapter of the Air Conditioning Contractors of America and is a representative with the Florida Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Contractors.


In his 30-plus years in the industry, he says he’s never seen that before. “A lot of times, we would see two [price increases], but never three,” he said.

Hastings estimates prices to be up 15% on new units, translating to roughly $500 to $600 for the average customer. “It’s significant, but it’s not thousands,” he said. Cason said he paid $1,800 for the small auxiliary unit he bought. “It was almost double what we were expecting,” he said.

Hastings recommends people take extra care of their air conditioners this year, starting with changing their filters.
“A dirty filter can take out other components,” he said. He recommends buying high-quality filters and changing them every two to three months. “Using a good filter actually helps.”

He also said people should trim bushes away from their outdoor units. And if anything within your A/C is acting up, he recommends scheduling a regular maintenance visit, possibly to “prevent a total breakdown.”
rfenst Offline
#91 Posted:
Joined: 06-23-2007
Posts: 39,100
RayR wrote:
So when do you predict the next housing bubble will burst?

When interest rates increase significantly.
HockeyDad Offline
#92 Posted:
Joined: 09-20-2000
Posts: 46,065
rfenst wrote:
When interest rates increase significantly.


Interest rates can’t increase significantly because it will bankrupt the Federal government! We can’t afford to rollover our debt at higher interest rates.
RayR Offline
#93 Posted:
Joined: 07-20-2020
Posts: 8,796
rfenst wrote:
When interest rates increase significantly.


Yes probably a good call there. It may well be FED desperation to slow the spread of inflation that will result in the collapse of the inflated home prices. Then there is that problem with the FED still buying mortgage securities.

https://www.axios.com/home-federal-reserve-mortgage-securities-ae25fb1c-9677-41c1-9d6c-10473797dd2f.html
rfenst Offline
#94 Posted:
Joined: 06-23-2007
Posts: 39,100
RayR wrote:
So when do you predict the next housing bubble will burst?





U.S. Price Growth Ticks Down for the First Time Since March
Homebuyers may see more options and less competition than earlier this year

Mansion Global

The median price of an existing single-family home in the U.S. ticked down 0.2% in the four-week period ending Aug. 1.
SOTHEBY'S INTERNATIONAL REALTY

For the first time in five months, home prices failed to set a new record—and that’s good news for buyers.

The median price of an existing single-family home ticked down 0.2% in the four-week period ending Aug. 1, compared to the four weeks ending July 25, according to a report Friday from Redfin. While that’s an 18% increase from the same time in 2020, it was the first time prices did not climb to a record high since early March.

“Although homes are much pricier than they were before the pandemic, home buyers now have the benefit of very low mortgage rates and a little less competition than they faced earlier in the summer,” Daryl Fairweather, Redfin’s chief economist, said in the report.

Asking prices also saw a slight decline of 1% in the four-week period ending Aug. 1 from their all-time high in late June, the report found. They registered a 12% increase compared to the same time the previous year.


Other indicators are starting to stabilize, in line with seasonal patterns that are expected in the summer months.

Pending sales rose just 3% in the four weeks ending in Aug. 1, the smallest year-over-year increase since the four-week period ending June 28, 2020, the data showed. They also dropped 12% compared to their May peak.

New listings saw a small year-over-year decrease of 0.2%, the first dip since March, according to the report.

“The number of homes being listed ticked up 1.9% compared to the four weeks ending July 25, similar to the trend seen the last two years during this time,” the report said.


Still, inventory is much tighter than this time last year. Active listings dropped 26% in the four week ending Aug. 1, compared to the same period in 2020, though that was the smallest decline since December 2020. There are 13% more listings than the four-week period ending March 7, the lowest number of the year so far.

Meanwhile, mortgage rates are back below 2.8% for the first time since the winter, according to Redfin.

“If these trends continue, home-buying conditions will likely improve (relative to earlier in the summer), with more options and less competition for homebuyers,” the report said.
rfenst Offline
#95 Posted:
Joined: 06-23-2007
Posts: 39,100
RayR wrote:
So when do you predict the next housing bubble will burst?





Interest-Rate Increases Could Come as Soon as Early 2023, Fed’s Clarida Says
Significant fiscal stimulus should speed faster recovery to central bank’s goals, according to Fed vice chairman

WSJ

Significant fiscal stimulus this year is speeding the economy’s recovery so that the Federal Reserve is able to consider lifting interest rates from near zero by early 2023, said a top central bank official in a speech Wednesday.

Fed Vice Chairman Richard Clarida said he expects that, under his current projections for inflation and employment, “commencing policy normalization in 2023 would…be entirely consistent with our new flexible average inflation targeting framework.”

Even though Mr. Clarida isn’t likely to be at the Fed at that time—his term on the board expires at the end of January—his comments are notable because his views are likely shared by a number of other Fed officials and because of his role in shaping the central bank’s current policy guidance.

Mr. Clarida was a leading architect of the Fed’s new policy framework unveiled one year ago by Fed Chairman Jerome Powell. That framework calls for the central bank to seek periods of inflation moderately above its 2% goal to make up for past misses of the target.

The Fed’s framework wasn’t designed for an environment like the current one, where prices are surging due to bottlenecks and supply shortages associated with reopening the economy from the Covid-19 pandemic. That has complicated the Fed’s task of not only forecasting inflation but also of clarifying how it plans to react to incoming data about economic growth, unemployment and inflation.

In September 2020, the Fed said that so long as consumers’ and businesses’ expectations of future inflation remains stable, it will hold interest rates near zero until inflation is “on track to moderately exceed 2% for some time” and until the labor market reaches conditions associated with maximum employment.

Mr. Clarida prefaced his remarks by saying that interest rate increases are “certainly not something on the radar screen right now,” but he said that if his outlook for inflation and unemployment is realized, then the Fed’s thresholds for raising rates “will have been met by year-end 2022.”

At their meeting in June, 13 of 18 Fed officials projected they would raise interest rates from near zero by 2023, with most expecting to raise their benchmark rate by 0.5 percentage point. Seven expected to raise rates next year. In March, most officials expected to hold rates steady through 2023.


Those projections aren’t a product of committee debate, and they can at times provide an incomplete picture of where the center of gravity sits on the rate-setting committee. Mr. Clarida’s comments provided greater detail around those projections by explaining the conditions and analysis behind when and why rate increases might be appropriate.

The Fed cut interest rates to near zero in March 2020, and it has been purchasing $120 billion a month in Treasury and mortgage securities to provide additional stimulus to the economy. Officials debated last month how and when to begin shrinking the pace of those purchases, and Mr. Clarida said Wednesday he could see the central bank announcing a reduction in the pace of purchases later this year.

The Fed’s new framework is aimed at addressing the problem the central bank faces of having less room to stimulate the economy once interest rates are lowered to zero, sometimes called the “effective lower bound” or “ELB.” In his speech, Mr. Clarida pointed to a burst of fiscal stimulus this year—something many forecasters at the Fed didn’t incorporate when they unveiled their interest-rate guidance in the second half of 2020.

“It is important to note that while the ELB can be a constraint on monetary policy, the ELB is not a constraint on fiscal policy, and appropriate monetary policy under our new framework, to me, must—and certainly can—incorporate this reality,” he said. Mr. Clarida said fiscal policy this year, including more than $2 trillion in excess savings that haven’t been spent by households, “can fully offset this constraint.”

Inflation has accelerated this year as the economy faces supply-chain bottlenecks and materials shortages. The Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, excluding volatile food and energy categories, rose 3.5% in June from a year earlier, compared with a 3.4% year increase in May.

Mr. Clarida said he expects inflation to decline next year, but that he expects it will still continue to run somewhat above the Fed’s 2% goal.

“I do continue to judge that these imbalances are likely to dissipate over time as the labor market and global supply chains eventually adjust and, importantly, do so without putting persistent upward pressure on price inflation, wage gains adjusted for productivity, and the 2% longer-run inflation objective,” he said. Mr. Clarida said he thinks the risks of inflation running higher than he currently expects are greater than the risks of inflation running lower than his forecast.
rfenst Offline
#96 Posted:
Joined: 06-23-2007
Posts: 39,100
RayR wrote:
So when do you predict the next housing bubble will burst?





Dem senator urges Fed to trim bond buys

Associated Press

WASHINGTON — A prominent Democratic senator, saying he is concerned about inflation, is urging the Federal Reserve to start trimming its monthly bond purchases.

In a letter to Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia said that he had become “increasingly alarmed” that the Fed has continued to buy $120 billion per month in Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities, even with the recession triggered by the COVID pandemic over and “our strong recovery well underway.”

While a number of Republicans have criticized the Fed for not beginning to taper the monthly bond purchases even as signs of inflation pressures mount, Manchin is the first Democrat to raise similar criticism.

In his letter to Powell dated Thursday, Manchin said he was urging the Fed “to immediately reassess our nation’s stance of monetary policy and begin to taper your emergency stimulus response.”

At the Fed’s last meeting on July 27-28, central bank officials signaled for the first time that the economy was moving closer to the “substantial further progress” officials want to see before they begin trimming their bond purchases.

Reduction in the bond buying would signal the start of the Fed’s pullback in support for the economy. The Fed has said that reductions in bond buying would be followed later by the start of increases in the Fed’s benchmark policy rate, which has remained at a record low of zero to 0.25% since the start of the pandemic in March 2020.

Many economists believe the reduction in bond purchases will not start until late this year or early in 2022.
Fed Vice Chairman Richard Clarida said in a speech Wednesday that he believes the economy’s accelerating recovery could allow the central bank to begin considering raising interest rates by early 2023.


Clarida said that under his economic forecast for inflation and employment, “commencing policy normalization in 2023” would be consistent with the Fed’s policy goals.
RayR Offline
#97 Posted:
Joined: 07-20-2020
Posts: 8,796
A Dem concerned about monetary policy is rare indeed. He must have picked up a good book or two.
The typical left-progtard believes that monetary policy and the economy must be run by central planning "experts" in government and the central bank, you know...like a Marxist country.

END THE FED
RayR Offline
#98 Posted:
Joined: 07-20-2020
Posts: 8,796
Welcome to the upside-down world of Bidenomics. When even Larry Summers warns that Biden's policies are irresponsible, they got to be really, really stupid.

Biden 'inflation tax' erases gains in workers' pay, as Democrats' own economists admit fears
From Joe Manchin to Obama's top economic adviser, warnings grow that everyday workers are falling further behind after gains under Trump.

Quote:
One promise from the U.S. economy emerging from the pandemic was that American workers would benefit from a tight labor pool driving up salary and pay. And while that happened, the benefits have all been erased by the sudden surge of inflation on President Biden's watch.

That means workers aren't running in place, they are actually falling behind as rising prices force middle- and working-class families to make hard choices, like whether to fill the gas tank or the refrigerator.

Inflation topped out at 5.4% in July, the government reported Wednesday, the third straight month above 5%. When President Trump left office in January, inflation was in check at just 1.4%.

Economists fear the multitrillion dollar spending that Biden and the Democrats launched in Washington — $4.5 trillion more was added by the Senate in a 24-hour period on Tuesday — is fueling the disadvantage.

"I support heating the economy one log at a time, not throwing them all on the fire at once," Harvard economist Jason Furhman, one of President Obama's top economic advisers, tweeted on Wednesday. "To the degree the [latter] leads to prices rising more than wages it won't leave workers better off."

More...

https://justthenews.com/nation/economy/thubidens-inflation-tax-already-erased-gains-workers-made-pay-even-democrats-fear-it

delta1 Offline
#99 Posted:
Joined: 11-23-2011
Posts: 28,754
cons have always predicted that the current progressive POTUS will destroy the US economy...hasn't happened in my lifetime, and I doubt Biden will have a worse result than Trump...

since Roosevelt, Dem POTUS' have had an overall better impact on US GDP than their GOP counterparts


https://www.thebalance.com/gdp-growth-by-president-highs-lows-averages-4801102

RayR Offline
#100 Posted:
Joined: 07-20-2020
Posts: 8,796
delta1 wrote:
cons have always predicted that the current progressive POTUS will destroy the US economy...hasn't happened in my lifetime, and I doubt Biden will have a worse result than Trump...

since Roosevelt, Dem POTUS' have had an overall better impact on US GDP than their GOP counterparts


https://www.thebalance.com/gdp-growth-by-president-highs-lows-averages-4801102



Then all Biden has to do start WWIII and the USA can have record GDP growth?
Progressive POTUS's have gotten the country in the biggest most costly wars in blood and treasure since Wilson.
That includes GWB, the so-called "Compassionate Conservative", just another name for a progressive.

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