Free Republic

Consumer prices are skyrocketing. The price of meat, poultry, fish and eggs was up 0.7% in May. The price of chicken is up 50% in the last decade. There are some mitigating factors in these price increases. The cattle herd isn’t very good this year and a pork virus has killed thousands of pigs. Nonetheless, with incomes stagnate price increases on staples such as meat and eggs is felt by the middle class. Consumer prices generally were up 0.4% in May after a 0.3% increase in April. Inflation has arrived after years of money printing at the Federal Reserve. (with...

The electricity price index and the average price for a kilowatthour (KWH) of electricity both hit records for May, according to data released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The average price for a KWH hit 13.6 cents during the month, up about 3.8 percent from 13.1 cents in May 2013. The seasonally adjusted electricity price index rose from 201.431 in May 2013 to 208.655 in May 2014—an increase of about 3.6 percent. ... Per capita production of electricity in the United States peaked in 2007. Since then it has generally been on downward trend. In 2013, the U.S....

Inflation unexpectedly jumped last month as higher prices for food, energy and other items pushed the annual rate above the Federal Reserve's preferred 2% target, the Commerce Department said Tuesday. The new data could lead central bank policymakers to act more quickly to raise rock-bottom short-term interest rates. The consumer price index rose 0.4%, the biggest monthly increase since February 2013, the Commerce Department said. The rise followed increases of 0.3% in April and 0.2% in March, a trend that mirrors improving economic data this spring. For the 12 months ended in May, the index was up 2.1%. That was...

The essential economic problem we confront today is that our dominant Keynesian intellectuals have abandoned reality. They do not grasp what they have wrought with the mountainous loads of debt and malinvestment that are overwhelming us. Much of this burden must be liquidated before genuine demand and growth can be restored, which will require radical reform if we are to evoke a genuine cure. To try and solve today’s debt created crisis with more debt (as the Keynesians are presently doing) can only bring on a bigger bust the next time around, which will require still larger “debt injections” to...

Never in my 30+ year career as a market observer have I seen so many out on a limb which is about to be SAWED OFF. Those who live within the matrix are fully loaded for a recovery which is not and will not appear. Nominally the Main stream media can proclaim ECONOMIC recovery has arrived, point to the rising developed world stock markets, seemingly benign bond markets of all categories: sovereign, investment grade and Junk, Private equity, corporate buy backs and more have priced in “Happy Days are here again”. HFT, unrestrained leverage in a financially repressed world and...

Up and down the foodservice spectrum, breakfast is heating up. Here are some recent developments: •Taco Bell introduced a breakfast menu trading on ubiquitous locations and a massive promo of the Waffle Taco. The Bell blitzed social media and took direct aim at rival McDonald’s, including an ad campaign making fun of Ronald the clown. •McDonald’s countered with an offer for free morning cup of McCafe and started promoting its McGriddle pancake wrapped breakfast sandwich. •Not to be forgotten, runner up, Burger King took a different approach, and announced it would serve burgers as well as breakfast fare each morning....

May 30, 2014 - 10:21 AM John_Rubino As expected, the US revised the most recent quarter’s GDP from barely positive to sharply negative today. But once again the true extent of the problem was hidden by some statistical sleight of hand, in this case wildly-optimistic inflation assumptions. Here’s an excerpt from the Consumer Metrics Institute’s just-published analysis: May 29, 2014 – BEA Revises 1st Quarter 2014 GDP Sharply Downward to Outright Contraction at Nearly a 1% Annual Rate: In their second estimate of the US GDP for the first quarter of 2014, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) reported that...

Joe WeisenthalMay 26, 2014, 11:11 AM At the end of last year, we wrote a post titled: Pretty Soon We Need To Talk About Inflation. The argument was not that inflation was going to be a problem, or that the Fed needed to tighten rates, or anything like that. It simply pointed out that since the crisis, there's been no legitimate reason to even be discussing inflation, since there wasn't any. But that that was about to change. And indeed, here in 2014, there are indeed a lot of people talking about inflation. Morgan Stanley's Vincent Reinhart writes in a...

Chriss W. Street 26 May 2014 After five years of the federal government telling the public that despite a $3.5 trillion increase in monetary expansion, the inflation rate is below +2%, the Department of Agriculture (DOA) just warned the American public that the consumer price index for food is up by 10% this year. The DOA tried to blame food inflation on the drought conditions in California, but last year’s drought was worse and food prices fell by -6%. The real problem is Federal Reserve monetary stimulus is stimulating inflation. I reported in "Food Price Inflation Scares the Fed” two...

After five years of the federal government telling the public that despite a $3.5 trillion increase in monetary expansion, the inflation rate is below +2%, the Department of Agriculture (DOA) just warned the American public that the consumer price index for food is up by 10% this year. The DOA tried to blame food inflation on the drought conditions in California, but last year’s drought was worse and food prices fell by -6%. The real problem is Federal Reserve monetary stimulus is stimulating inflation. I reported in "Food Price Inflation Scares the Fed” two months ago that commodity food costs...

As you scarf down burgers and potato salad this long Memorial Day weekend, consider this: Americans have the cheapest food in history, and that unprecedented abundance is largely responsible for why we’re so fat. According to a new article in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, Americans in the 1930s spent a quarter of their disposable income on food. That share has fallen steadily through the decades, to the point where today less than 10% of Americans’ disposable dollars go for food. (That varies across income groups, of course: The poorest 20% of Americans still spend about a third of...

Ask Alan Lane. In October, the president and CEO of Silvergate Bank in La Jolla, Calif., was up in Sacramento for a roundtable convened by the California Bankers Association and the state's Department of Business Oversight. Reading a laundry list of about a dozen issues on the department's radar, Commissioner Jan Lynn Owen mentioned Bitcoin — the Internet currency, payment system and technology that's been grabbing headlines, igniting controversy and inspiring innovation across the globe. Lane pricked up his ears, in part because the $616 million-asset Silvergate had been in discussions about banking a Bitcoin startup.

Mises Institute: How would you translate your new book’s title into English? Andreas Marquant: I would like to say The State Causes the Poverty It Later Claims to Solve. This is the title of my article on mises.org last December. An even better title could be The Austrian Answer to Thomas Piketty. MI: Your book addresses the issue of income inequality. Is income inequality a bad thing? AM: First of all, inequality and income inequality are natural phenomena because people are different. They all have different talents and that is a reason for the division of labor. It’s also a...

So, with another “plunge” in the economy coming, how’s the dollar going to hold up? Williams explains, “You are not seeing an annual deficit of $400 or $500 billion dollars. You are really seeing something close to $6 trillion. That is beyond control, and it raises the question of long term solvency of the U.S. It is a big concern for the global markets. It’s really the reason why nobody outside the United States wants to hold the dollar. Now, look at the U.S. economy, it is turning down. Economic strength is a big factor in the value of a...

“Got a buck? you’re in luck!” This jingle was a staple for you ever since your parents started giving you an allowance. At the time, you got maybe $5 a week to spend or save as you pleased. Although this was a fortune as far as you were concerned, a fiver tends to evaporate quickly, and your snack options were limited. One of the few exceptions to this was McDonalds. For just a dollar and change you could get a double cheeseburger or even hot fudge sundaes. Fast forward 5 years. You’re paying a lot for college, so the Dollar...

Gold is falling after Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen gave an upbeat assessment of the U.S. economy and said that inflation remains low. […] Yellen’s comments suggest that the Federal Reserve is set to continue reducing its economic stimulus, lessening the threat of rising prices. Investors typically buy gold as a hedge against inflation. …

You don't have to be on crack to believe the dollar isn't spiraling toward worthlessness but it would probably help if embracing that delusion were to be your goal. (Video-selfie)

For three decades, the U.S. middle class enjoyed a rare financial advantage over the wealthy: lower mortgage rates. Now, even that perk is fading away. Most ordinary homebuyers are paying the same or higher rates than the fortunate few who can afford much more. Rates for a conventional 30-year fixed mortgage are averaging 4.48 percent, according to Bankrate. For “jumbo” mortgages—those above $417,000 in much of the country—the average is 4.47 percent. …

It is now five years since the crash of 2008. Today's media and much of our academic crowd, of course, believe that the crisis has been handled, and that we can settle back to "business as usual." But such pundits are viewing only the trees, not the forest. They see correct Federal Reserve policy and legitimate fiscal policy on the part of the Federal Government. But this view comes from a false concept of economics and from a major failing of humans – their use of "euphemism" to flee from reality. For example, almost all of today's scholars and pundits...

The US Is Now A 'Rising Star' Of Global Manufacturing James B. Kelleher, Reuters Apr. 25, 2014, 5:05 AM (Reuters) - Call it the comeback kid. A new ranking of the competitiveness of the world's top 25 exporting countries says the United States is once again a "rising star" of global manufacturing thanks to falling domestic natural gas prices, rising worker productivity and a lack of upward wage pressure. The report, released on Friday by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG,) found that while China remains the world's No. 1 country in terms of manufacturing competitiveness, its position is "under pressure"...