InflationData.com

Your Place in Cyber Space for Inflation Data

Current Consumer Price Index (CPI-U) 260.388 | Current Annual Inflation Rate 1.18% | Released November 12, 2020 for the year ending October 2020 | Next Data Release December 10th 2020 |

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Annual Inflation in October is 1.18%

Annual Inflation Rate

Inflation Summary: Annual Inflation fell from 1.37% in September to 1.18% in October. CPI Index rose slightly from 260.280 in September to 260.388 in October. Monthly Inflation for September was 0.14% and only 0.04% in October. FED Funds Rates decrease slightly while FED Assets inch up. Next release December 10th Annual Inflation Chart: Looking at the Annual Inflation Chart since 1989 we can see a marked downward trend. Current Inflation Situation Looking at just the most … [Read More...]

Latest Articles

Emerging Technologies

Augmented Reality

The world today is driven by emerging technology and innovation. These technologies not only make our lives easier but also have resulted in a competitive business market. The adoption of emerging technologies and innovation in institutions has also strengthened management and governance across all business levels. However, with the numerous emerging technologies, you might be wondering which might be the best to explore.

A Better Understanding of How IRS Audits Work

10 Red flags for IRS

As an American citizen, you’re always in fear of making a mathematical error when you’re filing your taxes unless you’ve got a professional doing it for you. This feeling of fear can become a lot stronger when the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) sends you a piece of mail stating that you’re going to be audited. Luckily, knowing how an audit works and the steps you need to take during the audit can help you relieve some of that fear very quickly.

September Inflation Virtually Unchanged

Monthly Inflation Table

Annual Inflation rose from 1.31% in August to 1.37% in September. CPI Index rose from 259.918 in August to 260.280 in September. Monthly Inflation for August was 0.32%, for September it was 0.14. The FED held steady on Assets and FED Funds Rates. According to the BLS commissioner’s report, “The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased 0.2 percent in September on a seasonally adjusted basis after rising 0.4 percent in August, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 1.4 percent before seasonal adjustment.

The index for used cars and trucks continued to rise sharply and accounted for most of the monthly increase in the seasonally adjusted all items index. The food index was unchanged, with an increase in the food away from home index offsetting a decline in the food at home index. The energy index rose 0.8 percent in September as the index for natural gas increased 4.2 percent.

The Price of Oil Denominated in Bitcoin

Barrels of Oil per Bitcoin

Over the years we have been saying that it is important to look at prices of various commodities in terms of other commodities. For instance, we have looked at not only the Inflation Adjusted Gasoline Prices but also the Price of Oil Compared to Gold. Because of the recent volatility of  Bitcoin we thought it might be interesting to look at the price of oil denominated in Bitcoin. Back in 2016, we compared Gold vs. U.S. Dollar vs. Bitcoin and recently we published Gold vs. Dollar vs. BitCoin Revisited.

How has Venezuela’s Bitcoin experiment Fared?

In early 2018, in an effort to fight a collapsing economy and hyperinflationary currency Venezuela decided to jump on the BitCoin bandwagon and create its own cryptocurrency called the Petro. On December 3rd 2017, Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro announced the petro in a televised address, stating that it would be backed by Venezuela’s reserves of oil, gasoline, gold, and diamonds. Other reports claimed that the initial issue price would be based on the price of oil i.e. 1 Petro = 1 Barrel of Venezuelan oil.

On 5 January 2018, Maduro announced that Venezuela would issue 100 million tokens of the petro, for a total value of just over $6 billion. The government stated the pre-sale raised US$3.3 billion, though economist Steve Hanke said no independent audits were made to verify this claim. By February there was much confusion on the platform this new Crypto was supposed to be based. Initially, the currency was supposed to be based on the Ethereum platform, but then the platform was changed at launch to be NEM. This did not inspire much confidence in the reliability of the Maduro government’s ability to launch a cryptocurrency.

Inflation Adjusted Gasoline Prices

Inflation Adjusted Gasoline Trend Chart

Without looking at inflation-adjusted prices it is difficult to see where gasoline prices actually stand. Back in 1918 gasoline was $0.25 a gallon and by 1932 prices had fallen to 18 cents a gallon! But as we all know over the last 100 years the purchasing power of the dollar has fallen drastically so in order to get the true picture we can’t just say that the lowest price of gas was 18 cents per gallon, we need to adjust the price for inflation. When adjusting for inflation there are two prices… the first is called the “nominal price” and that is the actual price you would have paid for gas at the pump. The key price though is the inflation-adjusted price which calculates what the price would have been if we were spending current dollars on a specific date. In this case, we are basing our calculations on the value of a dollar in January 2020.

Inflation Rate of Electricity Prices

Inflation Adjusted Electricity Prices

Electricity Price Inflation Residential electricity prices in the U.S. have risen from an average of 7.83 cents per kilowatthour in 1990 to an average of 11.44 cents per kwh in 2010. This is a 46% increase in 20 years and sounds like a lot but as you can see from the chart below for many years[Read More…]

Inflation Adjusted NYSE Index

Inflation adjusted NYSE Stocks 2013

Source: inflationdata.com | NYSE Index Inflation Commentary To Print this Chart: When Printer dialog box appears be sure to switch to Landscape mode Note: Please feel free to link to this page but not to the image itself as the image may be renamed (or deleted) when it is updated but the page URL will[Read More…]

Inflation Adjusted Natural Gas Prices

Your Ability to Choose Should Increase Competition In years past consumers didn’t have a lot of choice when it came to their natural gas supplier, they were tied to the local gas utility, so if they wanted to charge a 541% markup you were pretty much stuck. But just prior to the new millennium states began[Read More…]

Inflation Adjusted Housing Prices

Inflation Adjusted Housing Prices

Inflation Adjusted Real Estate Prices-  Lets take a look at the idea that housing prices always go up. Of course, each neighborhood is different, so some neighborhoods might be going down while a few miles away housing prices are skyrocketing but by looking at the nationwide average we can get a better picture of the overall trend. The St. Louis Federal Reserve publishes the following chart that shows the S&P/Case Shiller National Home Price Index and by adjusting those prices for inflation we can get a better picture of how real estate prices really act. Is a home a good investment or not?

Inflation Adjusted Bonds

Inflation Indexed Bonds

Inflation Indexed Bonds Performance- U.S. Treasury Inflation indexed bonds are supposed to protect you from the ravages of inflation while providing a safe and decent rate of return on your money. Obviously, since safety is generally inversely proportional to risk, if  inflation indexed bonds are very safe you would expect the rate of return to be[Read More…]

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