Free Republic

In oral arguments Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear the government defend its kleptocratic behavior while administering an indefensible law. The Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act of 1937 is among the measures by which New Dealers tried and failed to regulate and mandate America back to prosperity. Seventy-eight years later, it is the government’s reason for stealing Marvin and Laura Horne’s raisins. New Dealers had bushels of theories, including this: In an economic depression, prices fall, so a recovery will occur when government compels prices to stabilize above where a free market would put them. So Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “brains trust”...

The world's two biggest oil firms, Exxon Mobil Corp and Royal Dutch Shell, may withstand the oil price collapse better than their rivals because they are closer to finishing expensive investment projects while others must keep spending. The near halving of oil prices since June is likely to send all the biggest listed oil companies into negative cash flow this year, and has sparked a rush to cut costs across the sector as a result. But depending on where they are in their spending cycles, some companies are finding those cuts easier to make than others. "Both (Exxon and Shell)...

Chevron Corp. said Tuesday it would sell off more assets and cut back on capital spending, as the integrated oil and gas giant looks to protect its finances from lower crude prices. Chevron said it would put about $15 billion of assets up for sale through 2017 — up from a previous $10 billion target — and cut capital spending incrementally to roughly $30 billion in 2017. In January, Chevron had said it would trim capital spending to $35 billion in 2015, down about $5 billion from its 2014 budget. Despite the cuts, the San Ramon, California-based company said it...

February 26, 2015 Austin Galt This analysis will cover the CRB Continuous Commodity Index, the US Dollar index and one of the main commodity currencies, the Australian dollar. We’ll begin with the CRB Continuous Commodity Index which comprises a mixture of components from sectors including energy, metals, soft commodities and agriculture. (snip)If this analysis is correct, it means a big deflationary spiral is dead ahead that will see market participants wide-eyed with fear. However, there should be a significant rally before then which will allow many to get their houses in order. And once this deflationary spiral has run its...

<p>WASHINGTON D.C. (AP) - All good things must come to an end. After months of watching them drop, gas prices went up again this week to an average of $2.20 a gallon, according to the Lundberg Survey.</p> <p>After plummeting by $1.65 between May and January, it seems the downward trend is over.</p>

Elena Holodny Feburary 3, 2015Food prices are out of control in Russia. So now, Russian officials are even thinking about putting a price cap on "essential food products," reports the Moscow Times. "We will see how to efficiently place [the restrictions] into law," the deputy prime minister Arkady Dvorkovich said. He also added that the government may give "the state competition watchdog more power in enforcing existing retail market regulations," reports the Moscow Times. What exactly counts as an "essential food product" is unclear at the moment. (snip)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - As U.S. gasoline prices plunge to the lowest level in more than five years, some U.S. lawmakers see a golden opportunity to bump up taxes at the pump to help pay for the repair of crumbling roads and bridges. Fuel taxes have been flat for more than 20 years, starving the Highway Trust Fund of revenue used for rising infrastructure repair costs. Lawmakers have fueled the fund with last-minute short-term injections of cash, but want to find a more permanent fix. Last July, before a similar deadline, Republican Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee and Democrat Chris Murphy...

ehicles, as did concern about global warming. But now gasoline prices have plunged to their lowest level since the Great Recession, averaging $2.50 nationwide for a gallon of regular. If gas prices stay low — granted, a very big “if” — one of the most powerful arguments for alternative fuel cars will be wiped out. “You have an early-adopter group that’s much more interested in these vehicles as a way of doing something 'green,’ and the cost of fuel is not going to be a big factor for them,” said John O’Dell, a senior editor at the Edmunds.com auto information...

Tyler Durden 12/17/2014Great news: The prices consumers pay dropped 0.3% MoM in November - the biggest deflation since Dec 2008. Of course, The Fed will be in "considerable" panic mode at this data and may choose to crush the hope of so many that rate hikes are coming in mid-2015 as definitive evidence that the US economy is well on the road to recovery. Ex-Food-and-Energy, prices rose 1.7% YoY - slightly missing expectations of +1.8%. Of course, a big driver of this 'transitory' disinflation is a 10.5% YoY drop in Gasoline and 6.6% MoM drop in November. Despite this huge...

November 27, 2014 By: Raul_I_Meijer We should be glad the price of oil has fallen the way it has (losing another 6% today as I write this). Not because it makes the gas in our cars a bit cheaper, that’s nothing compared to the other service the price slump provides. That is, it allows us to see how the economy is really doing, without the multilayered veil of propaganda, spin, fixed data and bailouts and handouts for the banking system. It shows us the huge extent to which consumer spending is falling, how much poorer people have become as stock...

Anna Driver November 2, 2014HOUSTON - Top U.S. oil producers, which already were reining in spending before crude prices started to slip in June, are now looking to trim more fat from their budgets while reminding investors they must spend to grow. Exxon Mobil Corp on Friday it would keep its current spending plan intact, though it is about 15 percent less than 2013. ConocoPhillips said it will spend less money next year, and Chevron Corp said it is looking for budget "flexibility." Crude oil prices have slumped 25 percent since June as global supplies grow and demand weakens. Exxon,...

Ron Bousso and Joshua Schneyer, Reuters October 13, 2014LONDON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia is quietly telling oil market participants that Riyadh is comfortable with markedly lower oil prices for an extended period, a sharp shift in policy that may be aimed at slowing the expansion of rival producers including those in the U.S. shale patch. Some OPEC members including Venezuela are clamoring for urgent production cuts to push global oil prices back up above $100 a barrel. But Saudi officials have telegraphed a different message in private meetings with oil market investors and analysts recently: the kingdom, OPEC’s largest...

Electricity prices are on the rise across the country, according to federal government data. The average price has risen more than 3 percent since the same time last year — the highest year-over-year growth for the first half of the year since 2009. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, residential electricity prices — what households pay to keep the lights on — averaged 12.3 cents per kilowatt hour for the first half of this year. This is 3.2 percent above the average price this time last year. New England, however, saw prices rise significantly more than the national average....

NBC News - The price to remove a gall bladder or replace a hip has spiked more than 20 percent during the past five years, according to an analysis of data collected for NBC News. Surgery has bloomed into a $500 billion industry in the United States, where 80 to 100 million procedures are performed annually — a per-capita rate that's some 50 percent higher than in the European Union, said Dr. John Birkmeyer, a researcher and adjunct professor at the Dartmouth Institute and in the university's Community & Family Medicine program. The reason? Expensive yet safer technologies and hospital...

How far does $100 go? Today's map, which comes from the Tax Foundation and uses data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, answers that question state by state. In Mississippi, your $100 could buy $115.74 worth of stuff relative to the national average. On the other end of the spectrum is Hawaii, where you'd only get $85.32 worth. Washington, D.C. is even lower, at $84.60. The Tax Foundation offers a little perspective on how to read the map: Tennessee is a low-price state, where $100 will buy what would cost $110.25 in another state that is closer to the national...

Leslie Baehr and Skye GouldJuly 28, 2014Many factors could drive certain food costs up radically in the future. It could be as simple as soaring demand from new markets. It could be as complex as the effects of climate change rendering farm fields too hot or try or spreading plant-destroying pests to new areas.(snip)

In the early-1990s, political Washington moved to change the nature of the CPI. The contention was that the CPI overstated inflation (it did not allow substitution of less-expensive hamburger for more-expensive steak). Both sides of the aisle and the financial media touted the benefits of a “more-accurate” CPI, one that would allow the substitution of goods and services. The plan was to reduce cost of living adjustments for government payments to Social Security recipients, etc. The cuts in reported inflation were an effort to reduce the federal deficit without anyone in Congress having to do the politically impossible: to vote...

"I can't find anything. Prices are climbing daily," said Jesus Ramirez, a taxi driver who has spent a year trying to replace the 2008 Renault he purchased new for $7,441. He sold the car for over $30,000 five years later. With inflation at 60% a year, among the highest in the world, Venezuelans protect their earnings by buying cars, among other big-ticket items. Car parts needed to keep vehicles on the road have also become difficult to find. That has led thieves to steal parts such as batteries from parked cars. The owner of a Caracas car dealership who said...

<p>Fast food fans, we've got some bad news. Wholesale prices on a bunch of your favorite food products have seen sharp increases this year. Among those, beef and avocados are through the roof, hitting burrito-makers doubly hard.</p> <p>Because of huge price increases for beef and avocados, Chipotle is raising menu prices for the first time in three years. It's a reality that a lot of restaurants are facing due to rising food prices.</p>

By Michael Snyder July 16th, 2014 The basic necessities in life just keep getting more expensive. On Tuesday, Hershey announced that the price of all of their chocolate bars is going to go up by about 8 percent. That is particularly distressing to me, because I am known to love chocolate. But if it was just chocolate that was becoming significantly more expensive perhaps that would be okay. Last month, it was coffee. J.M. Smucker, one of the largest coffee producers in the United States, announced that it planned to raise coffee prices by about 9 percent. And Starbucks has...