Inflation Comes In Hot (Again), Trump Is Descending Further Into Authoritarianism And Madness

Simon Rosenberg

Morning all. Greetings from Washington, DC, the Capital of the United States of America, and our mad leader’s new play toy. We will get to that in a moment.

Today we will experience yet another day where the gap between what is true and what Trump incoherently says will be enormous. The headline monthly inflation number came in at +0.2 last month, and an 2.7% increase over the last 12 months. This will be a number low enough that Trump will scream “no inflation” despite that number coming in above the Fed target rate of a 2% over 12 months.

The problem for Trump, for the Fed, and for all of us is that another closely tracked measure of inflation in today’s CPI report, “core inflation,” which is the inflation rate minus volatile food and energy, came in hotter than expected, 0.3% for the month and 3.1% over the last year. Here’s the write up from BLS (yes that BLS):

The all items index rose 2.7 percent for the 12 months ending July, after rising 2.7 percent over the 12 months ending June. The all items less food and energy index rose 3.1 percent over the last 12 months. The energy index
decreased 1.6 percent for the 12 months ending July. The food index increased 2.9 percent over the last year.

https://www.hopiumchronicles.com/p/inflation-comes-in-hot-again-trump