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Led by a steep slide in energy prices over the last 12 months, prices of a wide range of global raw materials—everything from iron ore to sugar—have been falling lately. That's prompted fears that deflation may worsen a global economic slowdown. But in the U.S., those fears overlook the long-term growth of services, where price trends have been very different. ... Falling prices are usually a sign that demand from companies and consumers is weak and that the economy may be hitting a soft spot. But when the price of services is taken into account, inflation seems less tame than...

Economic conditions in the United States have largely returned to normal and a Federal Reserve decision to raise interest rates should come soon, Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart said on Monday.... "The economy has made great gains and is approaching an acceptable normal ... conditions are no longer extraordinary." He later told journalists he was "very disposed" to a rate increase at the Fed's September policy meeting,

I sure am glad there's no inflation, because these "stable prices" the Federal Reserve keeps jaw-jacking about are putting us in a world of hurt. Those of us outside the inner circles of power are glad there's no inflation, because we'd rather get more for our money (deflation) rather than less for our money (inflation). You know what I mean: the package that once held 16 ounces now only holds 13 ounces. A medication that once cost $79 now costs $79,000. (This is a much slighter exaggeration than you might imagine.) Despite all these widely known examples of rampant inflation,...

LONDON (Reuters) - Americans and Britons bracing for their first interest rate rises in almost a decade are puzzled: why are rates about to go up when there's no inflation? Both the Federal Reserve and Bank of England are proclaiming that they are on the cusp of raising interest rates for the first time in almost a decade. It may take a few months, but the message they are sending still heavily-indebted households either side of the Atlantic is clear: 'be warned'. It's not hard to see why near-zero interest rates should be 'normalized' when you do a quick economic...

New evidence surfaced last week showing that life is getting worse for America’s renters, two news reports said. The Associated Press and Wall Street Journal did a mash-up of two economic reports demonstrating that monthly rents are rising faster than incomes. The online real estate site Zillow.com reported that rents increased 4.3 percent in June from a year earlier in the nation as a whole (and 3 percent in Orange County). That’s double June’s average hourly wage increase of 2 percent reflected in government data, the news outlets reported. “Rents are insanely unaffordable on a historical basis in the United...

Apart­ment rents are up. So are prices for restaurant meals, haircuts, gym memberships and a cup of coffee. For consumers who have become used to flat or even falling prices for years, an unfamiliar sight has emerged in many corners of the economy: Inflation is ticking up.

The deflationists argue that hugely accommodative monetary policy in the U.S., Japan (and nearly everywhere else in the world) has failed to produce real growth. Debt and obligations to social programs such as Medicare and pensions are so massive they can’t be paid. Therefore, according to deflation forecasters, they won’t be. Their predictions of default and accompanying bank failures, bankruptcies, and surging unemployment were bolstered by recent news out of Greece. Falling commodity prices and economic malaise have reemerged. They claim zero interest rate policy and quantitative easing merely delayed the inevitable for a bit. The inflation camp shares the...

We worry about our presidential primary process. Some wonder why. Some believe that we worry too much, and it all fixes itself in time; why get so worked up? Be patient, they say, the primaries will handle it, and then comes the election, don’t worry so much. And if you’re not in an early primary state, you have no effect anyway, so you’re better off saving your energy and just watching TV or going to a game. So we’re told, especially by friends and acquaintances who just don’t think it all matters that much, and who wonder why we’re willing...

Things are not so sweet for the sugar market. Prices have been tumbling and reached a six-year low on Monday on news that Brazil's cane growers are in for a bumper harvest. But while gold made the headlines, the dramatic fall in the sugar price was widely overlooked, despite closing down 4.4pc, compared with a 2.3pc slump in the price of bullion. Over the past year alone, sugar prices have fallen by a quarter. So why has everything turned sour? Bumper Harvest Monday's sharp price drop was driven by signs that Brazil, the world's biggest producer of sugar, is on...

Cosmic Inflation’s Five Great Predictions A “speculative” theory no more; it’s had four of them confirmed. Image credit: Max Tegmark / Scientific American, by Alfred T. Kamajian. “Scientific ideas should be simple, explanatory, predictive. The inflationary multiverse as currently understood appears to have none of those properties.” -Paul Steinhardt, 2014 When we think about the Big Bang, we typically think about the origin of the Universe: the hot, dense, expanding state where everything came from. By noticing and measuring the fact that the Universe is expanding today — that the galaxies are getting farther apart from one another in all directions — we...

Last week I wrote a column on MarketWatch that seems to have stirred quite a bit of debate. Within the column, I was pointing to the potential for a multi-decade rally to be seen in the metals and mining stocks. It seems many of you had very strong feelings that this was simply not possible. Over the next few weeks, I will attempt to address the concerns many of you have presented in your comments to my piece.

The reason why Zero Hedge has been steadfast over the past 6 years in its accusation that the Fed is making a mockery of, and destroying not only the very fabric of capital markets (something which Citigroup now openly admits almost every week) but the US economy itself (as Goldman most recently hinted last week when it lowered its long-term "potential GDP" growth of the US by 0.5% to 1.75%), is simple: all along we knew we have been right, and all the career economists, Wall Street weathermen-cum-strategists, and "straight to CNBC" book-talking pundits were wrong. Not to mention the...

Venezuela's black market exchange rate weakened below a key level on Thursday, as the bolivar's decline steepened in the face of hyperinflation and a rapidly shrinking economy. Over the past couple of years the value of the currency has plummeted against the dollar to its present 300 bolivar level. In 2012, a dollar would get you 10 bolivars, according to unofficial exchange rates. By the time President Nicolas Maduro was inaugurated in April 2013, it was 24 bolivars to the dollar and by this January it was at 173. This black market rate of 300.72 on Thursday was almost 50...

So, beginning in [ARSH]sic 2008 when it became clear that the Constitutional Republic was in the process of being overthrown in a cold putsch, and then forward as I continued to blog here, I called a series of things, in no particular order, except for the last three, which are obviously end-game events, and thus placed at the end of the list: 1. Reformation of the Islamic Caliphate facilitated by the Washington DC regime 2. Total economic war executed by the Washington DC regime against the American people, specifically the Cloward-Piven Strategy, namely driving as many people as possible out...

Munger says prepare for harder world as buying power slides     | March 26, 2015 : 4:47 PM MYT    Share on facebook Share on twitter (Mar 26): Charles Munger, who became a billionaire while helping Warren Buffett build Berkshire Hathaway Inc., predicted it’s going to get tougher for consumers to maintain their standard of living in coming decades.“We should all be prepared for adjusting to a world that is harder,” Munger, 91, said Wednesday at an event in Los Angeles, in response to a question about the increase in the size of the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet since...

Obamacare’s boosters have made so many implausible assertions about its supposed successes that it’s difficult to single out one as the most preposterous. But any list of their most comical claims would have to include those involving the law’s “wayback clause.” Haven’t heard of that one? Well, like the provision authorizing the IRS to issue subsidies via federal exchanges, it’s absent from PPACA’s text. Nonetheless, its efficacy is routinely touted by Obamacare’s proponents as proof that “reform” works. The most celebrated effect of this amazing provision is its retroactive reduction of medical inflation during the years preceding the law’s implementation....

~snip~ Germany was able to sell $3.72 billion of five-year bonds at a negative interest rate of .08%. In essence those who lent Germany this money were willing to pay the German government for the privilege of the government holding the investor’s funds for 5 years. The move reflects, in reality, that investors are more concerned about the return of principle than the return on principle. ~snip~ The disastrous consequences of the current economic policies allow negative interest rates to occur. Negative interest rates are a clear sign of an impending deflationary spiral. ~snip~ Just as the housing market and...

Very few people in America are willing to identify as upper class, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.About 94% of people in that income bracket (over $100,000) identified as middle class, upper middle class, or lower middle class while only 6% called themselves upper class.Here are the results of the survey:Pew Research Center While a family of three with an income of up to $122,000 is still considered "middle income," the over-$100,000 range also includes families with much higher salaries than that.Pew Research Center And although only 6% of survey respondents identified as upper class, Pew's data shows...

In 2006-2007 I called for a recession. We got a big one. I called for another one in 2011, as did the ECRI. That recession never happened. 50% is not a very good recession predicting track record except in comparison to consensus economic opinions that have never once in history predicted a recession. Consensus opinion is batting a perfect 0.00% Investigating the Record By the way, the ECRI was late in calling the recession of 2007. They still deny it. And questions regarding the 2001 recession and ECRI have still not been answered. I have talked about all of this...

EcoMatters February 26, 2015 CPI Core Shows Inflation The drop in energy prices, had the knee jerk reaction that we were in a deflationary spiral, again markets get many things wrong on first blush. The drop in energy prices is inflationary in the overall economy, and today`s CPI report showed what a sophisticated analysis would forecast regarding inflation and the role that low energy prices play in the overall inflation equation. We are going to have a transfer from the food and energy components which rely heavily on energy costs into the core inflation reading as consumers have more money...