Inflation Is Cooling, Leaving America Asking: What Comes Next?
Last edited Mon Jan 23, 2023, 11:58 AM - Edit history (1)
After six months of declines, inflation seems to be turning a corner. But the road back to normal is an uncertain one.
By Jeanna Smialek
Jan. 23, 2023, 5:00 a.m. ET
Martin Bate, a 31-year-old transportation planner in Fort Worth, spent the middle of 2022 feeling that he was “treading water” as high gas prices, climbing food costs and the prospect of a big rent increase chipped away at his finances.
“I was really starting to feel financially squeezed in a way that I hadn’t felt ever before, since finishing college,” Mr. Bate said. Since then, he has received a promotion and a raise that amounted to 12 percent. Gas prices have fallen, and local housing costs have moderated enough that next month he is moving into a nicer apartment that costs less per square foot than his current place. ... “My personal situation has improved a good amount,” Mr. Bate said, explaining that he’s feeling cautious but hopeful about the economy. “It’s looking like it might shape out all right.”
People across the country are finally experiencing some relief from what had been a relentless rise in living costs. After repeated false dawns in 2021 and early 2022 — when price increases slowed only to accelerate again — signs that inflation is genuinely turning a corner have begun to accumulate.
Inflation has slowed on an annual basis for six straight months, dipping to 6.5 percent after peaking at about 9 percent last summer, partly as gas has become cheaper. But the deceleration is true even after volatile food and fuel are stripped out: So-called core consumer prices have climbed 0.3 percent or less for each of the past three months. That’s faster than the 0.2 percent month-to-month changes that were typical before the pandemic but much slower than the 0.9 percent peak in April 2021.
Year-over-year percentage change in the Consumer Price IndexSource: Bureau of Labor StatisticsBy Karl Russell
America may have reached an inflection point on inflation at last. The question now centers on what will happen next.
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= new reply since forum marked as read
can be a bit of a PITA since they do overlays. But here it is from a screencap with the legends -
Good (chilly rainy with occasional rain/snow mix here) morning! 
Rove was well known to have advised Dubya to put war spending (over $150 billion a year throughout Bush's calamitous 2nd term) "off the books" - where they still figure to this day (deficit figures for that period exclude those monies).
So it stands to reason he was probably behind the ludicrous 3-point-something inflation readings. I recall an economist estimating actual inflation at 6% annually for 2004-07 - reaching a high of 16% by the summer of '08 (y-o-y).
Are they exact? Who's to say - but no one who lived in this country for all that time can deny those estimates are much closer to the truth.
"Karl, you put on weight again?"
"No"
"Don't shit me buddy. That kind of inflation, we can't lie about."
a little.
NYTimes article (no paywall) https://archive.is/2XKtj
A look at the last 6 months and graphs of the monthly increases show that recent inflation (as opposed to the year-over-year crap full of old data) shows that inflation is way down, not just 1/4 of the way down from its June peak that one would surmise from the year-over-year graph. Only an idiot gauges RECENT inflation from year-over-year numbers.
Last 6 months ANNUALIZED:
CPI: +1.9%
CORE CPI: +4.6% < == this is still high. Last 3 months: 3.2% annualized
PPI: -0.2%
CORE PPI: +2.6%
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CPI graph thru December
https://cpiinflationcalculator.com/the-consumer-price-index-dropped-0-1-seasonally-adjusted-and-rose-6-5-annually-in-december/
CORE CPI thru December monthly changes in tenths of a percent:
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{#} Producer Price Index - PPI
Latest PPI summary http://www.bls.gov/news.release/ppi.nr0.htm
Producer prices front page: http://www.bls.gov/ppi/
Producer Price Index (PPI), seasonally adjusted
http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/WPSFD4?output_view=pct_1mth
OLD CORE PPI - Producer Price Index, seasonally adjusted - Final demand goods less foods and energy -
http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/WPSFD413?output_view=pct_1mth
CORE PPI - Producer Price Index, seasonally adjusted - Final demand goods less foods. energy. and trade services -
http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/WPSFD49116?output_view=pct_1mth
More at the Inflation Megapost https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143007428#post2
(has not been updated yet for today's PPI numbers)
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PPI graph:
CORE PPI graph: (PPI less food, energy, and trade services)
