In hindsight, Jay Powell was horribly wrong.
Private-Equity Man Strikes Again!
As I’ve said before, Bloomberg Opinion is where idiot pundits go to try to impress other idiot pundits.
The author seems like just another smug and tone-deaf Bloomberg kleptocracy shill:
Gee, where did the inflation come from?
"...because inflation is ultimately a monetary phenomenon, the Federal Reserve has the capacity and the responsibility to ensure inflation expectations are firmly anchored at—and not below—our target." - Lael Brainard, May 16, 2019
More than 75% of people are “terrified” of the effect the cost-of-living crisis will have on their families, according to the head of Britain’s largest supermarket. Tesco Plc Chief Executive Officer Ken Murphy said the grocer has done a lot of research about how people are feeling right now as they battle the worst inflation to hit Britain in 40 years -- “and this is the word they use - ‘terrified’.”
The Cleveland Fed has a “16% Trimmed-Mean Consumer Price Index…The Trimmed-Mean CPI excludes the CPI components that show the most extreme monthly price changes.” This inflation index is running at 9.62% YOY.
The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: Food in U.S. City Average is up 10.1% YOY, the highest since March 1981.
The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: Meats, Poultry, Fish, and Eggs in U.S. City Average is running at 14.2%, the highest since May 1979.
FED'S POWELL: WE HAVE UNCONDITIONAL COMMITMENT TO FIGHTING INFLATION (I’ll take the under on this)
ECB'S NAGEL: ECB MUST NOT FALL BEHIND THE CURVE AS THAT COULD REQUIRE BIGGER RATE HIKES LATER WITH GREATER ECONOMIC COST (Euro zone inflation rose to a record high 8.1% in May. The ECB's deposit rate currently stands at minus 0.5 percent. Seems like that ‘behind the curve’ ship has sailed.)
FED'S POWELL: THE EFFECTS OF SHRINKING BALANCE SHEET WILL BE MARGINAL COMPARED TO IMPACT OF RISING INTEREST RATES (So get on with it! Has there been any QT yet?)
U.S. Home Equity Hits Highest Level on Record—$27.8 Trillion
Sounds good. $27.8 trillion used to be a lot of money.
“Americans’ home equity has been building, and about 60% of it was withdrawn via cash-out refinances in 2021…” Wait, what?
Monthly Supply of New Houses in the United States HUD numbers - it’s at 9 months, the highest since May 2010. The average supply since 1963 is six months, and the median is 5.8 months.
Classic New York Times: “What people are saying about the chance of a U.S. recession”
Guess who the people are? Guess!
Did you guess?
Here’s the complete list:
President Biden
Treasury Secretary Yellen
Elon Musk
Goldman Sachs
Cardi B.
Finger on the pulse!
I am reminded of Fareed Zakaria - the thinking man’s Tom Friedman - and his epic 2018 op-ed: I wanted to understand Europe’s populism. So I talked to Bono
Also hard to beat is the 2017 WEF Davos panel, “Squeezed and Angry: How to Fix the Middle-Class Crisis,” featuring Ray Dalio, Larry Summers and Christine Lagarde, I kid you not. I could not have picked a better satirical bunch. Zero self-awareness.
Another month, another record for US single-family rents, which jumped 14% year-over-year in April, marking the 13th period of record-breaking annual gains. (That 14% will NOT be going in the CPI.)
The state of the housing market in Los Angeles - a tent in someone’s backyard for $600/mo. Live year-round like a VIP at Coachella! (I have no idea if this is real or not, but it is certainly plausible.)
As Biden has said, we plebs need to feel more pain at the pump so that we'll give up our (cleanest running in the world) cars that are barely a blip on the global warming(TM) stage. Plus, we should stop eating meat & having shelter because it's bad for the environment. If we won't give them up voluntarily they'll just make it too expensive, which is good for us, I guess.
It's a masterclass in denial and stupidity that the money supply has been pumped an historic and unprecedented 5x its 2018 levels and entire flocks of cud chewing economists are baffled, just baffled about inflation.