#inflation-and-purchasing-power

#inflation-and-purchasing-power

"Fresh food and perishables are almost like the canary in the coal mine," when energy prices go up, according to Vidya Mani, an associate professor at the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business.

High energy prices are kryptonite for the housing market. Affordability, especially for those first-time home buyers, is now an elusive dream until oil prices come down and interest rates come down.

'Walmart Worries' just keep multiplying. It's currently close to the highest level ever recorded which was during the Great Financial Crisis of 2008-09.

Employers added 178,000 jobs last month, much more than forecasters had expected, reversing big job losses in February and indicating a rebound in the labor market.

"Jobs may be a bit modest when we look out over the last couple of years, but pay is telling a different story - that there is still a little bit of tightness in this labor market," ADP chief economist Nela Richardson told reporters Wednesday morning.

"Oil prices are higher again this morning, but Treasury yields are lower as the risks to economic growth begin to take precedence over the risks to inflation," Oxford Economics said in a note on Monday.

Escalating geopolitical risk continued to dominate global markets' concerns, with safe-haven demand keeping the dollar index anchored near a multi-week high.

The Committee seeks to achieve maximum employment and inflation at the rate of 2 percent over the longer run. Uncertainty about the economic outlook remains elevated. The implications of developments in the Middle East for the US economy are uncertain, the central bank said in a statement announcing its policy decision and referring to its Federal Open Market Committee.

The prosperity of this top cohort is not driven by wage growth. While their wages have risen, they have stagnated relative to the explosive returns on capital. Instead, their consumption is driven by the "Wealth Effect." New analysis shows that 70% of recent economic growth is now driven by just 20% of earners. These consumers aren't spending wages; they are spending paper gains tethered to a market bubble.

Trump is trying to reverse his sagging approval ratings by brute force, leaning on populist instincts to deliver visible cost relief before November. The result: institutional stability and capitalist norms - like so much else in the Trump era - are increasingly subordinate to raw presidential power. Zoom in: Trump has denied knowledge of the Justice Department's criminal inquiry into Fed chair Jerome Powell, which is nominally focused on cost overruns from the central bank's renovation of its D.C. headquarters.

Employers added a healthy 130,000 jobs in January, the Labor Department said this week, as the unemployment rate edged down to 4.3%. The caveat? That announcement came with revisions that showed job creation flatlined over the last year, with only 15,000 jobs being added per month on average. Service sectors like finance and professional services that normally power the creation of high-paying office positions have instead been shedding jobs, perhaps reflecting employers' anticipation of AI-related cost savings.