Your Place in Cyber Space for Inflation Data
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released its December Inflation report on January 14th, 2020, for the 12 months through the end of December 2019. December Inflation Jumps Up Annual inflation tops the 2019 high set in November at 2.05% reaching 2.29%. CPI Index in December was 256.974, November was 257.208 down from October's 257.346 Monthly Inflation for December was -0.09% up from -0.32% in December 2018. Next release February 13th The CPI index itself decreased … [Read More...]
Annual inflation in November was 2.05% up from October’s 1.76%. The last time inflation was this high was in April.
Inflation has been in a narrow range through much of 2019. 1.79% in May, 1.81% in July, 1.65% in June, with a high of 2.00% in April.
Inflation peaked at 2.95% in July 2018. The CPI-U index in November was 257.208 down from 257.346. Monthly Inflation for November was -0.05% much higher than -0.33% in November 2018.
During 2019 the annual inflation rate hovered between a low of 1.52% in February and 2.00% (which occurred in April). But the range was actually much smaller. From May through October the high was 1.81% in July and the low was 1.65% in June. Using the single decimal place calculations of the Bureau of Labor Statistics it is actually difficult to see the difference between July through October. Since the BLS says they are 1.8%, 1.8%, 1.7%, 1.8%. By looking at the two-digit results however we see 1.81%, 1.75%, 1.71%, and 1.76%. So rather than a 0.1% increase from September to October we see that it was actually half that at 0.05%.
According to the BLS commissioner’s report, “The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) rose 0.4 percent in October on a seasonally adjusted basis after being unchanged in September, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 1.8 percent before seasonal adjustment. The energy index increased 2.7 percent in October after recent monthly declines and accounted for more than half of the increase in the seasonally adjusted all items index; increases in the indexes for medical care, for recreation, and for food also contributed. The gasoline index rose 3.7 percent in October and the other major energy component indexes also increased. The food index rose 0.2 percent, with the indexes for both food at home and food away from home increasing over the month.”
Recently Freshman Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) thrust Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) into the popular limelight by suggesting that MMT was how the U.S. could pay for her “Green New Deal”. What is MMT and how is it different from good old “Money Printing”?
History is rife with examples of countries that tried to print money without any “governor” on the quantity of money printed. Recent examples include Argentina, North Korea, Zimbabwe, and Venezuela. See: 27 examples of hyperinflation from ancient Egypt through modern-days. In today’s article Charles Hugh Smith of Daily Reckoning looks at why Modern Monetary Theory Won’t Work.
While inflation has been low in most developed countries over the last decade, there are places where it is starting to pick back up, with stronger growth outlooks for several major economies. As we can see from the chart below the OECD is projecting massive inflation in 2020 for both Turkey and Argentina at 12.6% and 22.7% respectively. The average of all OECD countries is a low 2.4%.
I recently came across an interesting article by Paul O’Brien on Quora. For those who may not know, Quora is a site where individuals can ask questions and get a variety of different answers from people in the community (hopefully subject matter experts). I have been participating in answering questions on Quora for a few years now. But I particularly liked this answer and thought I would share it with you. Although the original question was “Is capitalism failing? Why or why not?” Paul chose to answer based on the inflation rate of various categories of consumer goods.
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.
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…]
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…]
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 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 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…]
