Free Republic

Consumer prices have been rising precipitously this year. If you annualize the Consumer Price Index through the first five months of 2021, you get a CPI increase of over 6%. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell continues to push the narrative that inflation is transitory, but not everybody buys into this storyline. On the Wolf Street Report, Financial Analyst Wolf Richter said Powell’s temporary inflation is turning into an “inflation spiral.” Richter said some measure of inflation will likely tick down in the months ahead, but to steal Powell’s term, the relief will be transitory and only serve to offer false...

It’s not surprising that last week’s 5.0% CPI reading in headline consumer prices year-over-year in May was the fastest pace of increase in more than a decade. The Fed’s destructive money-pumping of $120 billion of Treasury and GSE debt and supply chain disruptions have unleashed an inflationary monster that Fed members swear is only “transitory.” Days ago, BofA economists told their clients that the evidence of shortages and inflation continues to grow with every passing day, as does the list of reasons to reject the problem as purely temporary. Others such as Cambridge’s Mohamed El-Erian claim inflation could be here...

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Thursday “high annual rates of inflation” will persist through the end of the year, stretching the timeline of rising prices past a couple of months as the White House previously indicated. “My judgment right now is the recent inflation we’ve seen will be temporary, it’s not something that’s endemic,” Yellen said Thursday during a House subcommittee hearing. “I expect it to last, however, for several more months, and to see high annual rates of inflation through the end of this year.

Our American CatharsisWill Obama-time be a transitory experience or an enduring tragedy?  For years conservatives have railed about the creeping welfare state. They have tried to tag liberals with being soft on national security, both for courting those who faulted America and for faulting others who courted it. The parameters of all these fights were well known, as talk radio, the blogs, and cable news hourly took up hammer and tongs against the creeping “liberal agenda.” But for all the furor, there were few unabashed leftist gladiators in the arena who openly fought under the banner of radically transforming the...