Tag Archive: U.S. Consumer Price Index

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) measures the change in the price of goods and services from the perspective of the consumer. It is a key way to measure changes in purchasing trends and inflation.

FX Daily, January 18: Markets Stabilize, Awaiting Fresh Cues

2017-01-18

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2017-01-18

FX Performance, January 18, 2017 Movers & Shakers
The US dollar has stabilized after yesterday's bruising. From a fundamental perspective, little has changed. After hard exit signals from the UK government sent sterling down from $1.2430 on January 5 and 6, to below $1.20 at the start of the week, the pound rallied back to almost $1.2430 yesterday amid "sell the rumor buy the fact" activity.

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Our “Gaslight” Economy

2016-12-07

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2016-12-07

Civilian Unemployment Rate
If you don't like what these charts are saying, please notify The Washington Post to add the St. Louis Federal Reserve to its list of Russian propaganda sites. Yesterday I described our gaslight financial system. Today we'll look at our gaslight economy. Correspondent Jason H. alerted me to the work of author Thomas Sheridan ( Puzzling People: The Labyrinth of the Psychopath), who claims to have coined the term gaslighting.

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FX Daily, November 17: Consolidation Gives Dollar Heavier Tone

2016-11-17

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2016-11-17

FX Performance, November 17 2016 Movers and Shakers
The US dollar is trading with a heavier bias today as its recent run is consolidated. The euro is trying to snap the eight-day slide that brought it to nearly $1.0665 yesterday, the lows for the year. It is almost as if participant saw the proximity of last year's lows ($1.0460-$1.0525) and decided to pause, perhaps to wait for additional developments, such a Fed Chief's Yellen's testimony before the Joint Economic Committee of Congress.

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End Of The Bond Bull – Better Hope Not

2016-10-26

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2016-10-26

Is this time different?
It’s been really busy as of late to cover all of the topics I have wanted to address. One topic, in particular, is the bond market and the ongoing concerns of a “bond bubble” due to historically low interest rates in the U.S. and, by direct consequence, historically high bond prices.

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FX Daily, October 18: Dollar Slips Broadly but not Deeply

2016-10-18

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2016-10-18

FX Performance, October 18 2016 Movers and Shakers
According to Bank of England deputy governor Ben Broadbent the drop in the value of Sterling has helped to stop the UK economy from falling further since the shock of the Brexit vote. He went on to say ‘in the shape of the referendum, we’ve had exactly one of those shocks’ and added that the Bank of England would not interfere with monetary policy to boost the Pound’s value.

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Great Graphic: Consumer Inflation: US, UK, EMU

2016-10-18

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2016-10-18

CPI UK CPI US, CPI Eurozone
Price pressures appear to have bottomed for the US, UK, and to a lesser extent, EMU. Rise in prices cannot be reduced solely to the increase of oil. Core prices are also rising.

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FX Daily Rates, October 17: Dollar Starts Week Narrowly Mixed, while Bonds and Stocks Retreat

2016-10-17

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2016-10-17

FX Performance, October 17 2016 Movers and Shakers
The US dollar is consolidating in relatively narrow trading ranges. Participants appear to be waiting for fresh incentives, while the recent rise yields continue and equities have begun the new week on a soft note. Yellen spoke before the weekend, and her explicit willingness to tolerate higher inflation pushed yields higher, while not deterring expectations for a hike in December.

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If Everything Is So Great, How Come I’m Not Doing So Great?

2016-09-12

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2016-09-12

National health expenditures, Gross Domestic Product, Wages
While the view might be great from the top of the wealth/income pyramid, it takes a special kind of self-serving myopia to ignore the reality that the bottom 95% are not doing so well. We're ceaselessly told/sold that the U.S. economy is doing phenomenally well in our current slow-growth world -- generating record corporate profits, record highs in the S&P 500 stock index, and historically low unemployment (4.9% in July 2016).

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FX Daily, August 16: Dollar Slumps, but Driver may Not be so Obvious

2016-08-17

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2016-08-17

The US dollar is being sold across the board today. The US Dollar Index is off 0.65% late in the European morning, which, if sustained, would make it the largest drop in two weeks. The proximate cause being cited by participants and the media is weak US data that is prompting a Fed re-think.

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Real vs. Nominal Interest Rates

2016-08-10

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2016-08-10

Calculation Problem. What is the real interest rate? It is the nominal rate minus the inflation rate. This is a problematic idea. Let’s drill deeper into what they mean by inflation. You can’t add apples and oranges, or so the old expression claims. However, economists insist that you can average the prices of apples, oranges, oil, rent, and a ski trip at St. Moritz.

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The Real Reason the “Rich Get Richer”

2016-07-24

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2016-07-24

  Time the Taskmaster DUBLIN – “Today’s money,” says economist George Gilder, “tries to cheat time. And you can’t do that.” It may not cheat time, but it cheats far easier marks – consumers, investors, and entrepreneurs.   Tempus fugit – every action...

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FX Daily, July 15: Sterling and Yen Remain Key Drivers in FX

2016-07-15

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2016-07-15

The US dollar is broadly mixed against the major currencies. The Swiss franc's 0.25% gain puts it at the top of the board, after sterling's earlier gains were largely unwound in late-morning turnover. The yen is the weakest major; extending its loss by 0.6%, to bring the weekly decline to more than 5%. The pre-referendum result high for the dollar was near JPY106.85. Today's high has been about JPY106.30. In emerging markets, we note that the...

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Stockman Rages: Ben Bernanke Is “The Most Dangerous Man Walking This Planet”

2016-07-12

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2016-07-12

Ben Bernanke is one of the most dangerous men walking the planet. In this age of central bank domination of economic life he is surely the pied piper of monetary ruin. At least since 2002 he has been talking about “helicopter money” as if a notion which is pure economic quackery actually had some legitimate basis.

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Down Go the Hopes and Dreams of Three Generations

2016-06-19

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2016-06-19

On Wednesday, Janet Yellen pressed on the broken buttons again. After the two day FOMC meeting, the Fed Chair announced they’d continue pressing the federal funds rate down to just a ¼ to ½ percent – effectively zero. What type of insanity is this? If she keeps it up, and whole thing doesn’t implode, the yield on the 10-Year Treasury note could also slip below zero…along with the hopes and dreams of three generations of retirees.

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FX Daily, June 16: Markets are Anxious, Yen Soars

2016-06-16

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2016-06-16

The US dollar is higher against the major currencies but the Japanese yen and the New Zealand dollar.  The dollar fell to new two-year lows against the yen to JPY103.55 before bouncing in the European morning back to JPY104.40.  The...

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Visualizing “The 5000 Year Long Run” In 18 Stunning Charts

2016-06-09

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2016-06-09

In the long run, as someone once said, we are all dead, but in the meantime, as BofAML's Michael Hartnett provides a stunning tour de force of the last 5000 years illustrates long-run trends in the return, volatility, valuation & ownership of financi...

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Fed Suppression, Long Term Economic Repression

2016-05-19

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2016-05-19

The Federal Reserve really wants to raise rates, but they do not dare as the consequence of interrupting an unprecedented level of capital misallocation is too grave to face head on. So our money masters continue their low interest rate policy; pulli...

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Great Graphic:US Rents and Core Inflation

2016-05-02

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2016-05-02

Shelter inflation in the U.S. is at 3.2% per year, but only 1% in Europe. It is 33% of the US CPI basket, but only 6.4% of the euro zone. This leads to massive distortions in CPI inflation, and to wrong bets of investors and FX traders.

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Gold And Negative Interest Rates

2016-04-30

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2016-04-30

Submitted by Dan Popescu via Acting-Man.com, The Inflation Illusion We hear more and more talk about the possibility of imposing negative interest rates in the US. In a recent article former Fed chairman Ben Bernanke asks what tools the Fed h...

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Gold and Negative Interest Rates

2016-04-28

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2016-04-28

  The Inflation Illusion We hear more and more talk about the possibility of imposing negative interest rates in the US. In a recent article former Fed chairman Ben Bernanke asks what tools the Fed has left to support the economy and inter alia discu...

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