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☆ Credibility crisis requires BoE to write new plot
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-20 | by ( Francesco Guerrera | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +7 min

LONDON, June 20 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Since May 24, thousands of British people have had their homeowning dreams dashed by a sudden spike in mortgage rates. Unlike many other central banks, the BoE doesn’t provide its own forecasts of how consumer prices will evolve in coming years. The whiplash occurred because traders had to digest the inflation shock without any interest rate guidance from policymakers. Because most banks price home loans off those derivatives, it sent mortgage rates rocketing. The BoE announces its latest interest rate decision on June 22, with traders expecting a 25-basis-point hike, to 4.75%.

Persons: “, Paul Gascoigne, BoE, Andrew Bailey, That’s, Bailey, ”, Charles Goodhart, ’, apocryphally, Seneca, David Roberts, George Hay, Oliver Taslic Organizations: Reuters, Bank of England, Monetary, U.S . Federal Reserve, European Central Bank, Reuters Graphics Reuters, MPC, Financial Times, Fed, Thomson Locations: policymaking, BoE’s

☆ Just days after pausing rate hikes, Fed official calls for more increases
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-16 | by ( Bryan Mena | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +5 min

Washington, DC CNN —The dust has barely settled on the Federal Reserve’s decision to pause its aggressive rate-hiking campaign — but in public appearances Friday, central bank officials have a clear message: Keep hiking. In one of the first speeches, Fed Governor Christopher Waller said Friday that additional rate increases are necessary to bring inflation down to the central bank’s 2% target. The Fed’s decision to restart hikes depends on what data show in the coming weeks and months. It is the job of bank leaders to deal with interest rate risk and nearly all bank leaders have done exactly that,” Waller said. A representative of the event said the conference wasn’t being recorded and that only registrants who paid a fee were able to attend.

Persons: Christopher Waller, ” Waller, ”, Gregory Daco, Ernst & Young, ” Powell, Waller, “, Michael Gapen, Gapen, they’re, Louis President James Bullard, Thomas Barkin Organizations: DC CNN, Federal, Norges Bank, International Monetary Fund, Ernst &, Bank, BofA Global Research, CNN, Federal Reserve Bank of St, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, Maryland Government Finance, Association Locations: Washington, Oslo, Norway, ”

☆ US retail sales rose in May
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-15 | by ( Bryan Mena | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

Retail sales at stores, online and in restaurants grew 0.3% in May from April, the Commerce Department reported on Thursday. Retail sales data is adjusted for seasonality but not for inflation. Excluding sales at gasoline stations, retail spending increased by a faster clip of 0.6%. From a year ago, overall retail sales rose 1.6% in May. Impact of the labor marketWhile retail sales held up in May, spending has erred on the weaker side after a big jump in January.

Persons: Brian Field, ”, Joshua Shapiro, Maria Fiorini Ramirez, Jerome Powell, Thomas Simons, Deborah Weinswig Organizations: DC CNN, Commerce Department, Sensormatic Solutions, CNN, Federal Reserve, Jefferies, “, Coresight Locations: Washington

☆ CPI in May: US inflation cooled significantly — but it's still not where the Fed wants it
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-13 | by ( Alicia Wallace | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +8 min

The Consumer Price Index, a key inflation gauge that measures price changes for a basket of goods and services, increased 4% for the year ending in May. That represents a sharp pullback from April’s 4.9% and is slightly below economists’ expectations for a 4.1% gain, according to Refinitiv. It’s the 11th consecutive month that inflation has slowed, and it’s a welcome reprieve from the painful shock of persistently high inflation endured during the past two years. The Fed would like to see inflation (as measured by the core Personal Consumption Expenditures index) settle in at 2%. Markets are currently pricing in a 95.3% probability that the Fed pauses on Wednesday, according to CME FedWatch.

Persons: It’s, “, Nancy Vanden Houten, it’s, Chris Zaccarelli, “ They’ve, ”, Scott Olson, Vanden Houten, There’s, Kurt Rankin, ” Rankin Organizations: Minneapolis CNN, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Oxford Economics, CNN, Federal Reserve, Independent, CPI, Fed, FedWatch, Walmart, Federal Reserve Bank, Richmond, Hospitality, PNC Financial Services, PNC, United Locations: Minneapolis, Chicago , Illinois, United States

☆ Americans haven’t been this optimistic about inflation in two years
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-12 | by ( Alicia Wallace | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

Minneapolis CNN —Americans are optimistic about inflation being lower in the coming months; however, their future outlooks — for price hikes as well as their own finances — are a little more clouded. Consumers’ near-term inflation expectations fell in May to their lowest level in two years, according to new survey data released Monday by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Additionally, inflation expectations for three and five years from now increased from the month before, according to the New York Fed’s monthly Survey of Consumer Expectations, which measures expectations and behaviors over time for a rotating panel of 1,300 individuals. Since peaking at a 40-year high last June, inflation has cooled considerably but still remains above the Federal Reserve’s target of 2%. Fed Chair Jerome Powell has expressed concern about the possibility of sustained wage gains putting upward pressure on inflation.

Persons: Price, Jerome Powell Organizations: Minneapolis CNN, Federal Reserve Bank of New, York, Consumer, Fed, Labor Statistics Locations: Minneapolis, Federal Reserve Bank of New York

☆ The job market held up in May. But the Fed may have already decided to pause
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-02 | by ( Bryan Mena | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +8 min

Washington, DC CNN —The US labor market picked up momentum in May, once again defying expectations of a slowdown. Many economists, including those at the Fed, still expect a recession later in the year. The labor market and signs of future disinflationThe May jobs report mostly showed that the labor market held up. Some top economists have argued that the strong labor market has had a minor, albeit growing, impact on inflation. Hawkish Fed officials still think the Fed’s job isn’t done.

Persons: That’s, Joe Biden’s, ”, Philip Jefferson, Patrick Harker, “, ” Harker, It’s, ” Julia Pollak, ZipRecruiter’s, you’ve, you’d, Dave Gilbertson, hasn’t, Ben Bernanke, ” Jack Macdowell, Louis President James Bullard, Bullard, Louis Fed’s, Louis, Jerome Powell, there’s, Ian Shepherdson, Eugenio Alemán, Raymond James Organizations: DC CNN, Federal, Fed, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, National Association for Business Economics, CNN, Employers, of Labor Statistics, BLS, UKG, The Palisades Group, Hawkish Fed, Federal Reserve Bank of St, Louis Fed, Pantheon Locations: Washington, Washington ,

☆ The Fed’s favorite inflation gauge just heated up — and that could mean another rate hike
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-26 | by ( Alicia Wallace | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +6 min

The closely watched core PCE index — where volatile components of food and energy are excluded — unexpectedly ticked up: The Fed’s go-to gauge was up 4.7% for the year. In March, the core PCE gauge grew by 4.6%. Economists had forecast that core PCE would hold steady at 4.6%, according to Refinitiv. Consumer spending jumped 0.8% in April from March, double what economists had expected. Excluding the effects of inflation, real consumer spending increased 0.5%, reflecting a boost seen from new car purchases, according to the report.

☆ ‘Greedflation’ loosens its grip on food retailers
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-24 | by ( Aimee Donnellan | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

Big food manufacturers like Kraft Heinz (KHC.O) and Unilever (ULVR.L) are ratcheting down the price rises they have been inflicting onto supermarket chains. If food retailers can convince cash-strapped customers to skimp less and pay more, their profit margins will finally start growing. Last week, the country’s food retailers opened negotiations on prices with manufacturers like Coca-Cola (KO.N) and Unilever as food inflation surged to over 15% in March. Food manufacturers can certainly do more. Meanwhile, food inflation remained high at 19.1% in April versus 19.2% in March.

☆ Former Fed Chair Bernanke argues economy must slow further to bring down inflation
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-23 | by ( Bryan Mena | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

Inflation has cooled in the past several months, according to the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge and the Consumer Price Index, though some Fed officials have said that it’s not cooling fast enough. Indeed, the labor market remains on strong footing. “Overheating in the labor market has played a minor role but an increasing one over time. Overall inflation crept up throughout that year, then the Fed began to raise interest rates in March 2022 from near zero. Despite the failures of three regional banks since March, the Fed still raised interest rates two more times during that period.

Persons: Ben Bernanke, ” Bernanke, Olivier Blanchard, Blanchard, they’re, Mary Daly, ” Daly, isn’t Organizations: DC CNN, Former Federal, Fed, International Monetary Fund, Brookings Institution, Federal Reserve Bank of San Locations: Washington, Washington ,, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco

☆ Instant View: US April CPI rise gives Fed little room for pivot soon
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-10 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +7 min

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 0.4% last month after gaining 0.1% in March, the Labor Department said on Wednesday. In the 12 months through April, the CPI increased 4.9% after advancing 5.0% on a year-on-year basis in March. Ahead of this reading Fed President John Williams warned that they were not done raising rates. I think the Fed will raise rates again in June and then pause. "There will be another CPI report before the Fed meets, and expectations are you will start to see the effect of rents easing."

☆ US April CPI rise gives Fed little room for pivot soon
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-10 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +7 min

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 0.4% last month after gaining 0.1% in March, the Labor Department said on Wednesday. In the 12 months through April, the CPI increased 4.9% after advancing 5.0% on a year-on-year basis in March. Ahead of this reading Fed President John Williams warned that they were not done raising rates. "There will be another CPI report before the Fed meets, and expectations are you will start to see the effect of rents easing." The other thing is shelter, a huge component of CPI and it came in a little bit weaker."

☆ The Week in Business: The 10th Straight Rate Increase
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-07 | by ( Marie Solis | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +4 min

It was the third consecutive increase of that size and the 10th straight rate increase since last March. This encroaching deadline presents a tricky political problem for Mr. Biden. Republicans are trying to extract concessions from Mr. Biden that would significantly undermine his agenda. He could negotiate spending cuts but divorce those discussions from the debt limit. There is one other possible option: a constitutional challenge to the debt limit, a long-shot plan that would rely on a clause in the 14th Amendment.

☆ Inflation’s real benefits beat theoretical costs
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-05 | by ( Felix Martin | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +7 min

Yet economic theory has a remarkably hard time identifying the social costs imposed by a rising price level. A more serious charge is the uncertainty that rising prices introduce into financial planning. If the theoretical costs of inflation are elusive, the potential advantages it has to offer are more concrete. U.S. house prices, meanwhile, peaked last year at a full 45% higher in real terms than when Rogoff made his plea. In the end, the practical benefits of inflation will trump its theoretical costs.

☆ Sliding Diesel Prices Signal Warning for U.S. Economy
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-25 | by ( David Uberti | Bob Henderson | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

A nationwide freight slowdown has helped cut U.S. diesel prices by half from last year’s record, raising concerns that parts of the world’s largest economy have begun to slow. Wholesale diesel recently fell to $2.65 a gallon in New York Harbor, down from $5.34 last May, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent commodity markets haywire and turned prices advertised at gas stations into street-level reminders of inflation’s 40-year highs. Record diesel costs made it more expensive to operate excavators at construction sites, run machinery on farms, and haul goods from ports, rail yards or factory floors.

☆ Beer Drinkers Cut Back as Bud Brewer AB InBev Raises Prices
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-02 | by ( Peter Stiff | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Brewer AB InBev said revenue rose in the U.S. thanks to higher selling prices and its strategy to push into more premium brews. Budweiser brewer Anheuser-Busch InBev SA reported a fall in sales volumes for the fourth quarter as drinkers in North America bought less of the company’s beer amid rising prices. The drop comes as companies across the consumer-products industry grapple with how much they can raise prices to offset rising costs without deterring shoppers. For much of the past year, AB InBev said drinkers weren’t giving up their brews despite inflation’s bite, though that trend appeared to end in the last quarter.

☆ Inflation Brings Back the Heat
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-14 | by ( Justin Lahart | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

The Federal Reserve can probably take last month’s bump up in inflation in stride. That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t care about it. The Labor Department on Tuesday reported that overall consumer prices rose a seasonally adjusted 0.5% in January from December and it revised December’s monthly change from down 0.1% to up 0.1%. Core prices, which exclude the often volatile food and energy categories in an attempt to better capture inflation’s trend, rose 0.4% in January, with December’s gains revised to 0.4% from 0.3%.

☆ Inflation has gone supercore
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-13 | by ( Christine Romans | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

The new favorite: supercore inflation. Supercore inflation refers to prices that rise when workers get paid more for their services. “Supercore inflation was a strong 6.4% on a year-over-year basis through December 2022, but it is moderating,” said Mark Zandi, Moody’s chief economist. For the three months through December, supercore inflation is up only 2.4% annualized, and just 0.9% annualized in the month of December. “Supercore inflation is still way too hot, but it has begun to cool off, and all signs point to it and overall inflation getting back to something more comfortable over the coming 12-18 months,” Zandi told CNN.

The fragile state of the American economy and the euro zone’s surprise resilience could leave the European Central Bank as the lone hawk among major rate-setting institutions. Investors can benefit from the split by favouring the euro and European equities. Yields on 10-year U.S government bonds have dropped by 17 basis points to 3.62%, while equivalent German sovereign debt yields 2.29% – 15 basis points less than at the start of the year. By November it could be down to 150 basis points. On Feb. 2 the European Central Bank increased its key rate by 50 basis points to 2.5%, its fifth successive hike.

☆ Forget Core CPI, Market Pros Are Searching for Supercore Inflation
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-12 | by ( Sam Goldfarb | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Prices of services are rising quickly. Prices of goods are falling. Policy makers and market watchers already strip out volatile components of price indexes to understand what is known as core inflation. These days, many are on the hunt for an even narrower measure: a supercore. When the Labor Department releases its latest inflation reading on Thursday, most investors will still look first at the monthly change in the so-called core consumer-price index, which excludes food and energy categories to provide a better sense of inflation’s longer-term trajectory.

☆ Inflation cooling is good economic news. It might not feel like it
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-14 | by ( Zachary B. Wolf | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +6 min

Stocks, which had risen on the “inflation is cooling” news Tuesday, were down Wednesday on the “Fed is not convinced” development. GOP leader Kevin McCarthy is trying to find the votes to become speaker, and adding a spending fight to his plate would get messy quickly. But the spending fight loomsNone of the disagreements over spending are going away. Inflation moved the electionThe difference between 7.1% month-over-month inflation and 7.7% inflation in October may not feel like much on the micro level to Americans who are paying 49% more for eggs this year than they were last year. “In the coming decade, they’re going to be fighting hard to get inflation down.”In the meantime, cooling inflation might be praised by policymakers, but it could rub everyone else the wrong way, especially if an economic slowdown starts to feel like a recession.

☆ What goes up… is starting to come down
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-10 | by ( Christine Romans | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

Gas prices are back to last year’s levels, after spiking to a record high of just over $5 a gallon this summer. “Falling prices in categories such as toys and electronics accelerated demand in November,” Adobe reported, noting that computers and electronics saw the biggest year-over-year price cuts since 2014. After hitting a record high this summer, chicken prices have dropped sharply. The Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge, the PCE Price Index, rose 6% in October versus a year ago and notched the smallest monthly gain in more than a year. The final Consumer Price Index report of the year comes out on Tuesday, and the Producer Price Index also showed signs of cooling, at 7.4%, down from an 8.1% annual rate in October.

☆ Housing Costs, Inflation’s Biggest Component, Are Poised to Ease
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-06 | by ( Gwynn Guilford | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

The end is in sight for one of the biggest sources of inflation. Surging housing costs helped keep inflation high this year but have likely already swung into reverse, economists say. The signal comes from private-sector indexes of rents on new leases, which tend to lead the consumer-price index measures by a little less than a year, said Alan Detmeister, economist at UBS .

☆ Gap's slowing sales of baby clothes indicate inflation is deeply hurting families
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-18 | by ( Parija Kavilanz | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

New York CNN Business —Customers are pulling back on spending at Gap and Old Navy — particularly in one specific category that shows just how much families are feeling inflation’s pinch. But Gap and Old Navy said Thursday they’re now seeing less spending on babies’ and kids’ items. “Old Navy customers still have a propensity to buy. More than a quarter said inflation motivated those purchases, and half of parents surveyed sold a secondhand item in the kids’ and baby items category. Mercari said parents of kids 2 and under are the most active secondhand shoppers, according to its survey.

☆ The Inflation Cooldown Is Finally Here
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-10 | by ( Justin Lahart | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

The inflation cooldown might be real this time. The Labor Department on Thursday reported that consumer prices rose a seasonally adjusted 0.4% in October from a month earlier, less than the 0.6% that economists had forecast, putting them up 7.7% from a year earlier. That compared with an 8.3% on-year gain in September. Even more cheering, prices excluding food and energy—the so-called core that economists and policy makers see as more reflective of inflation’s trend—rose 0.3% from September, versus an expected gain of 0.5%, putting them up 6.3% from a year earlier.

☆ Inflation Strains Voters Across Income Levels Ahead of Midterm Elections
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-07 | by ( John Mccormick | Bryan Mena | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

The economic pain from the highest inflation in four decades is reaching across all income groups and casting a broad shadow over Democrats’ prospects for keeping control of Congress in Tuesday’s midterm elections, the latest Wall Street Journal poll shows. Lower-income voters are feeling inflation’s impact the most, but the survey shows the burden of rising prices is also weighing more heavily than earlier this year even on wealthier households. Among those with annual household incomes of more than $150,000 up to $200,000, 26% say rising prices are creating major financial strains, nearly double from the level in March.

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