Free Republic

Wholesale prices increased at their quickest pace ever in November in the latest sign that the inflation pressures bedeviling the economy are still present, the Labor Department reported Tuesday. The producer price index for final demand products increased 9.6% over the previous 12 months after rising another 0.8% in November. Economists had been looking for an annual gain of 9.2%, according to FactSet.

The inflation picture does not get any prettier, as the Labor Department reported on Tuesday that producer prices rose at a record pace in November. The 0.8% monthly increase was above expectations of a 0.5% increase. The 9.6% annual rate of increase was the highest for the series dating back to 2010 and above forecasts for a 9.2% rise. The reading on wholesale prices follows last week’s measure of consumer inflation that showed prices rose at an annual rate of 6.8% last month, the fastest pace in nearly 40 years.

<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>

The decline was unexpected. Economists polled by MarketWatch had predicted a 0.1% increase in the PPI after a 0.6% gain in April and a 0.5% rise in March. The price of goods fell 0.2% in May led by a drop in the wholesale cost of energy. The price of services also decreased 0.2%. Personal consumption, a new index designed to foreshadow changes in the consumer price index, fell 0.2% in May.

An article from Reuters this morning claimed "The number of U.S. workers filing new applications for unemployment insurance unexpectedly surged last week" which begs the question exactly who's doing the expecting? Anyone living outside the government bubble and the ivory towers of academia knows that the job market is not improving and the recovery that President Obama is constantly bragging about has not reached the working (or suddenly not working) class of America.

Wholesale prices shot up at double the expected pace in January, propelled higher by big increases in energy costs. The surprisingly large jump was viewed as a temporary blip and not the start of inflation problems, however. The Labor Department said Thursday that wholesale prices rose 1.4 percent last month, reflecting higher costs for gasoline and other energy products. Private economists had expected a 0.7 percent increase. Core inflation at the wholesale level, which excludes energy and food, rose 0.3 percent in January, faster than the 0.1 percent increase economists had predicted. The 1.4 percent January rise in the department's...

Wholesale prices shot up 1 percent in March lifted by the biggest jump in gasoline costs in nearly three years. The big advance in the Producer Price Index, which measures inflation pressures before they reach consumers, comes after wholesale prices edged up 0.2 percent in February, the Labor Department reported Friday. The jolt last month largely came from a sharp increase in energy prices, especially gasoline. That caused the overall reading on wholesale inflation to be worse than the 0.7 percent increase many analysts were bracing for. In another report, sales at the nations retailers rose a modest 0.2 percent...