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UPDATED FRI, FEB 24 20231:48 PM EST

Dow drops more than 300 points as a hot inflation report rattles Wall Street

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/24/the-fed-cant-tame-inflation-without-more-hikes-paper-says.html

The Green Dragon said:

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Well, this thread certainly needs a little bumpity bump.

Here we are. The leftists have conceded that they cannot stop inflation and protect their buddies at the same time. The FED will reverse course and lower the fed rate.

Maybe OP was right, we don't need to worry about inflation, we need to worry about hyperinflation.

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It took 40+ years of the fed pumping extra money into the economy for us to get this fat. It's baffling to me that they would try to fix it in a year.

2 years ago today, the media told us inflation was actually a good thing.

Today, they’re now blaming us for inflation.

🤡 pic.twitter.com/jlSmYfZkcs

— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) December 2, 2023

Forgive a lack of source. It was the Wall Street journal.

They discussed in an article about how much money was saved up in the Pandemic and how Americans, on average, have depleted 95% of those savings by just buying stuff. Now that student loans have kicked into gear, I'll be curious what happens now that debt will skyrocket.

Carlo4 said:

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Forgive a lack of source. It was the Wall Street journal.

They discussed in an article about how much money was saved up in the Pandemic and how Americans, on average, have depleted 95% of those savings by just buying stuff. Now that student loans have kicked into gear, I'll be curious what happens now that debt will skyrocket.

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Auto/home delinquencies are back at pre-pandemic levels. I believe unsecured debt is as well, but haven't put eyes on that recently.

My expectation is credit is already maxed out, not about to be for most that tried to keep the stimulus party going.

Ultimately, believe this trickles into finally seeing some modest slowing of consumer spending through the holidays.

Carlo4 said:

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Forgive a lack of source. It was the Wall Street journal.

They discussed in an article about how much money was saved up in the Pandemic and how Americans, on average, have depleted 95% of those savings by just buying stuff. Now that student loans have kicked into gear, I'll be curious what happens now that debt will skyrocket.

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Have they kicked into gear? All I've read is how more we forgiven and continued deference through bureaucratic gamesmanship with companies needing to dot Is and cross Ts.

Bump

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2023/12/13/fed-lowers-inflation-forecast-for-2024-seeing-core-pce-falling-to-2point4percent.html

This is Progs sock, right?

Any Home Alone fans?

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2023/12/08/home-alone-grocery-prices-kevin-mccallister-1990-2023/71826081007/

Well, I am enjoying this transitory drop in gasoline prices. but they have already gone up 30-40/gal in the last week.

Bump?

Going back to the OP, I stated this in another thread, but this is an example of twisting yourself in a pretzel to see what you want to see (confirmation bias). Of course you could argue there were deflationary factors out there coming out of COVID. I think its wrong to take the leap the OP took that we could print as much as we want without consequences. That is simply never true.

But anyone just taking a step back from all the metrics could see that increasing the money supply by ~$7 trillion over about 2.5 years would lead to inflation regardless of what deflationary factors were at play.

Now to the notion of a "soft landing" since that's been the buzz phrase. How do you define soft? Do you reset the Feds historical goal of 2% inflation to argue we are landing "softly"? What if it take 5-6 years to get back near 2%? Is that "soft"? Even if inflation is decreasing, when it's decreasing from a historically high number, that's still way off the target.

Point being you can argue whatever you want and flash a bunch of fancy metrics and arguments, but you simply cannot radically and in a short period of time flood the market with money and expect there to not be inflation, let alone deflation. You then have two choices: (i) try to engineer a "soft landing" or (ii) take the Volcker approach. I'm not necessarily advocating for either, but clearly "temporary" inflation has, not surprisingly, not been the reality the OP claimed three years ago.

Robert L. Peters said:

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Well, this thread certainly needs a little bumpity bump.

Here we are. The leftists have conceded that they cannot stop inflation and protect their buddies at the same time. The FED will reverse course and lower the fed rate.

Maybe OP was right, we don't need to worry about inflation, we need to worry about hyperinflation.

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what's amazing is we were making the SAME posts ONE YEAR AGO about stubbornly high inflation in this thread...

but trust the FED!

Redstone said:

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I remember being in CA four years ago, shocked to see 3.50 per gallon (gasoline for vehicles).

And now, in TX?

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$4.39 a gallon

for not even the highest octane here in Bethesda, MD Sunday...

With rewards at Market Street, filled up the F150 with "86" octane at $2.64 p/gal. I still paid too much for groceries. Hard to beat the fresh produce section though.

OP, is this deflation yet?