Posted on 04/30/2026 9:19:08 AM PDT by Miami Rebel
Fast-rising gas prices lifted the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge to 3.5% in March, its highest rate in almost three years, new data showed Thursday.
The Personal Consumption Expenditures price index rose 0.7% from February, a faster-than-expected acceleration from the previous monthly pace of 0.4%, the Commerce Department reported Thursday. The annual rate of inflation, which jumped from 2.8% in February, is now running at its fastest pace since May 2023.
The PCE Price Index is the inflation gauge the Federal Reserve uses for its 2% target rate.
The sharp hike in energy prices, an aftershock of the Middle East conflict’s squeeze on the oil trade, was largely responsible for the sudden jump in inflation. When excluding food and energy costs, prices rose 0.3% from the month before (a slight downshift from the 0.4% monthly gain notched in February) and increased 3.2% on an annual basis. That’s in line with what economists were expecting; however, the annual rate did move up from 3%.
In addition to the PCE price index, which the Federal Reserve uses for its 2% inflation target, Thursday’s Commerce Department report also provided a look at how households’ spending, income and savings were holding up.
Consumer spending jumped 0.9% from February, but when taking inflation into account, it rose just 0.2%.
The dollars consumers put in their gas tanks and toward other energy goods accounted for 42% of the month’s spending change, Commerce Department data shows.
Households’ personal and disposable (after-tax) income both rose at 0.6% paces in March; however, when accounting for inflation, disposable income dropped by 0.1%, the second consecutive monthly decline.
The personal saving rate fell for the second month in a row as well, dropping to 3.6% from 3.9% and landing at the lowest rate in four years.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
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Does that mean I will get a bigger raise in social security benefits next year?
Anyone ever notice that a gov’t shutdown doesn’t decrease spending?
So we’re including gas & energy prices again? Didn’t they remove that under Biden?
The high price of gas in the US is due to the speed of light. Before the telegraph, information could not travel faster than a horse or a man running. All prices were local, except for items that could be shipped by water or horse-driven carriages.
If we did not live in the modern world of the internet, gas prices in the US would be less than $2.00 a gallon. With the internet, all physical goods are abstracted into digital contracts that can be bought and sold globally. Someone on one side of the world could buy cheap US oil and sell its contract in Europe for ten times as much. Now, these differences, called arbitrage, are settled at the speed of light.
The issue is not the absolute price of gas. The issue is whether people understand and believe that making a temporary sacrifice in purchasing power is worth not being a slave to a totalitarian Islamic fascist power with nuclear arms and the capacity to dictate over our lives and freedom. Truth is what survives, and the Western values of the US must survive over tyranny.
Remember kids!
Washington Post (May 2021): In an article about rising prices and stock market dips, it quoted an economist: “A little inflation is good, as it supports lending, investing and borrowing, which all contribute to economic growth.”
You’re thinking of Core CPI.
The Personal Consumption Expenditures price index hasn’t changed in decades.
nope
not that you shouldn’t. Just that you won’t.
Inflation beats deflation always. It accompanies growth.
But clearly there is a limit at which point it harms savers and workers.
It will rise further if Trump jawbones the Fed into forcing interest rates down to stimulate demand. Politicians always favor borrowers over savers.
Prices and employment make it hard for even a Warsh-led fed to cut.
Today I saw the highest pump price I’ve ever seen.
I hate using acronyms like LOL, but I actually did laugh out loud.
[Funny story: a friend told me that maybe a decade or so he got word that a friend’s sister died. He sent the bereaved a message expressing his sympathy and concluded it with LOL. He thought that it meant “lots of love.’]
I got gas on Sunday. Yesterday the same gas station had raised the price of gas 51 cents a gallon. The price on Sunday is already more than a dollar higher than the price in late February.
Some one help me out here. Who was President in May 2023?
Oh, yeah. That Joe Biden guy. A Democrat, if I recall correctly.
Absurd. We get deflationary prices in technology all the time. The questions should be why have Savers been destroyed and why does our government hate them. A healthy environment would support deflationary prices overall, thank you innovation!!
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