Despite the musings from Biden, his people, and the Credentialed Media that inflation is no big deal and “coming down”, the people who actually know about this stuff know the truth
New inflation reading reinforces Fed’s higher-for-longer stance
Another hot inflation reading reinforces that any near-term interest rate cuts are less likely as the Federal Reserve shifts to a higher-for-longer stance.
The Fed’s preferred inflation measure — the “core” Personal Consumption Expenditures index that excludes volatile food and energy prices — clocked in at 2.8% year over year for the month of March. That was the same level as February but a tenth of a percent higher than expected.
Month over month, the measure of inflation rose 0.3%, which was in line with expectations.
“Today’s data means that it will take a longer string of months of good inflation data before the Fed will be comfortable with cutting,” said Preston Caldwell, chief US economist at Morningstar.
While the rate of inflation is certainly less than it had been, inflation is still much higher than when Trump left office and Biden took office (and inflation immediately skyrocketed). But, consider that if you’re adding 2.8% to a product that is already much higher than pre-Biden, that adds quite a bit to the price. It doesn’t seem like much, but, take a product that was $2. Six percent inflation makes it $2.12. Add 2.8% and you now add another 6 cents. Doesn’t seem like much money, right, but, now add this via all the inflationary increases, and a can of Progresso soup costs around $2.50 when it had been under $1.60 before Bidenflation.
And then add all these inflationary increases to bigger ticket items. And that most things have gone up, meaning the entire cost of living has jump up. And there doesn’t seem to be much relief in sight, and interest rates will stay high
Before last week, investors were still looking at a rate cut in July, while now the odds are 66% that the central bank will hold rates steady that month.
Cutting rates in July “seems a bridge too far now, unless we see both inflation return to 2% in coming months along with a marked deterioration in the economic activity data,” Caldwell added.
Will the Fed try and find an excuse to cut rates to help Biden’s re-election? That’s a question that must be asked. It should also be asked why the Fed waiting way too long to increase rates when it was clear that post-COVID buying was at least back to normal but product availability was not, especially with big money items like vehicles and homes. Then stopped raising rates too early, and then started yammering about cutting them early.
Read: Bidenflation Makes Rate Cut From Feds Unlikely Anytime Soon »