{"id":1457853,"date":"2022-04-29T09:29:34","date_gmt":"2022-04-29T13:29:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1457853"},"modified":"2022-04-29T09:29:37","modified_gmt":"2022-04-29T13:29:37","slug":"another-inflation-gauge-hits-a-40-year-high","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/another-inflation-gauge-hits-a-40-year-high\/","title":{"rendered":"Another Inflation Gauge Hits a 40-Year High"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">14<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fanother-inflation-gauge-hits-a-40-year-high%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1457853&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><\/div>\n<p>At least the Biden administration performs consistently on the economy. Consistently bad, especially for lower-income workers, who keep watching their buying power evaporate. A new report on a key inflation index also shows inflation raging at a 40-year high.<\/p>\n<p>CNBC\u2019s Jeff Cox <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2022\/04\/29\/the-feds-favorite-inflation-gauge-rose-5point2percent-in-march.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">buries the lede a bit<\/a> here:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>A measure that the Federal Reserve focuses on to gauge inflation rose at a robust pace in March, likely cementing the central bank\u2019s intention to raise interest rates by half a percentage in May.<\/p>\n<p>The core personal consumption expenditures price index, which measures costs that consumers pay across a wide swath of items and accounts for how behavior changes in response to market dynamics, increased 5.2% from a year ago, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.<\/p>\n<p>That was slightly below the 5.3% reading in February, which was the highest reading since April 1983.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Yes, except consumers don\u2019t experience \u201ccore\u201d inflation. They experience \u201cfull\u201d inflation, and that\u2019s running away at a higher pace:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Including volatile food and energy prices, the PCE index accelerated by 6.6%, the fastest pace since January 1982. Headline inflation was up 0.9% from February, much faster than the previous 0.5% increase.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>What do consumers buy most? Food and energy. Economists like to exclude those categories from their long-term calculations because of their volatility, but for most American households, those categories are key to their budgets and family economies. That is why real disposable income took a big dip in March, an impact that will erode consumer spending if inflation continues to sap buying power:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Real disposable personal income, or the amount of income after taxes and adjusted for inflation, declined 0.4% in March after increasing 0.1% in February.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>That leaves the Fed in a bind over inflation, as I mentioned yesterday. They have already signaled a 0.5% increase (or 50 basis points, if you will) to their interest rate, but <a href=\"https:\/\/hotair.com\/ed-morrissey\/2022\/04\/28\/stagflation-arrives-gdp-falls-in-q1-but-n465545\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the Q1 contraction<\/a> of -1.4% annualized GDP\u00a0 will have them worried about recession as well as inflation. That report showed that the setback mainly came from a massive trade imbalance in the first quarter, but (a) that may continue into this quarter too, and (b) business investment slacked off a\u00a0<em>lot<\/em> while still growing slightly over the previous quarter. If they hit the brakes too hard, the Fed could produce a technical recession, and China\u2019s expanding lockdowns means that supply chains could amplify whatever impact the Fed\u2019s upcoming actions will have.<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, too little action will not tame inflation either. We could end up in the worst of both worlds \u2014 stagflation, where growth subsides but a wage-price spiral continues. We arguably could already be there, but even if we haven\u2019t, we\u2019re clearly on that path. For lower-income consumers who have lost buying power to a point where it impacts their ability to put food on the table, it may already feel like a recession, technical or not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At least the Biden administration performs consistently on the economy. Consistently bad, especially for lower-income workers, who keep watching their buying power evaporate. A new report on a key inflation<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":498,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1457853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1457853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/498"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1457853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1457853\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1457853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1457853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1457853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}