3.2% inflation

Forget it, the MAGA have come up with new variables to measure the economy, during the Obama recovery it was Labor Participation Rate, and now they’ve added another to counter any signs of economic improvement
 
Forget it, the MAGA have come up with new variables to measure the economy, during the Obama recovery it was Labor Participation Rate, and now they’ve added another to counter any signs of economic improvement

The labor participation rate--something I've used since at least Bush II--measures employment / unemployment. It has nothing to do with inflation per se directly, you economic illiterate.

Saying that inflation with Biden is getting a bit lower is like saying you have a flat tire on your car but at least the tire isn't getting flatter now...
 
The labor participation rate--something I've used since at least Bush II--measures employment / unemployment. It has nothing to do with inflation per se directly, you economic illiterate.

Saying that inflation with Biden is getting a bit lower is like saying you have a flat tire on your car but at least the tire isn't getting flatter now...

Conservatives sure love talking down good economic news....
 
That a really shitty economy, the worst since at least Carter, is getting a little less shitty isn't "good economic news." It's putting perfume on a turd.

Trump left office as the worst jobs President in modern history, and having helped lay the groundwork for global inflation, which started just prior to Biden actually being inaugurated.

Trump was an economic disaster as President. Considering what he inherited - Biden hasn't done too bad.
 
The labor participation rate--something I've used since at least Bush II--measures employment / unemployment. It has nothing to do with inflation per se directly, you economic illiterate.

Saying that inflation with Biden is getting a bit lower is like saying you have a flat tire on your car but at least the tire isn't getting flatter now...

First off, it has been an economic indicator, however, with Obama it became the economic indicator for the right, and by itself doesn’t carry that kind of relevance, and secondly, didn’t imply it related to inflation, rather employed it to show that no matter what was occurring the MAGA cult would come up with something out of the blue to attack the lowering inflation rate

And you missed the thread’s point, inflation is receding, and better in the US than any where else in the world.

You still have the antiquated thought that prices are going to return to those of some bygone year, ain’t happening, they never did, companies aren’t going to suddenly surrender the profits that they have been recording, basic economics
 
Really good article on inflation and consumer confidence (and why the latter is lowering even as economic data is picking up).




While All Inflation Feels Bad, Housing Inflation Is the Worst

For some, unaffordable homes undercut the American dream even more than high gasoline and food prices


Two weeks ago, I asked why Americans were in such a rotten mood when the data said the economy is in such good shape. The disconnect has only grown since. Inflation, we just learned, eased in October, extending a two-week rally in stocks and bonds. And yet the University of Michigan’s index of consumer sentiment keeps falling.

It’s clear readers cared less about inflation dropping, which only meant prices were rising more slowly, than about the fact that the level of prices is painfully high compared with three years ago.

It is also clear that not all inflation is equal. Three things in particular have our attention: gasoline, food and houses.

Gasoline and groceries are a big part of your budget, and you buy them every week, so you notice when the price goes up—and stays up. Their prices have also risen especially steeply: 43% and 20%, respectively, since January 2021, versus 15% for the consumer-price index excluding food and energy.

This helps explain why consumer sentiment is lower than unemployment and inflation would predict. Specific prices don’t enter into the University of Michigan’s index. That said, a rising share of respondents spontaneously mention food or gas prices in the interview and they have much lower sentiment than those who don’t, Joanne Hsu, director of the university’s survey, said. That jibes with my anecdotal evidence. “Obviously, you don’t do much grocery shopping or have a car that uses gasoline,” was one reader’s quite typical reaction to my column.

The good news is, gasoline is down about a third since its mid-2022 peak. Grocery prices haven’t fallen, but they are only up 2% in the past year; dairy, eggs, chicken and meat are flat. Even if they don’t drop, maybe a long spell of not going up will loosen their grip on our psyche.

Housing is an entirely different matter. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, which compiles the CPI, doesn’t measure the cost of homeownership with home prices. Rather, it estimates what a homeowner would pay to rent their own house. This “owners’ equivalent rent” tends to track rents rather than houses and is up 17% since the start of 2021.

But if you’re actually in the market, what matters is the price of a home and the mortgage rate. Since January 2021, home prices, despite a late 2022 dip, have risen 29%, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller national home price index, and mortgage rates have nearly tripled. The buyer of the typical home thus faces a monthly principal and interest payment of nearly $2,200, more than double the level of early 2021, the National Association of Realtors calculates. No wonder the net share of consumers telling the University of Michigan it is a good time to buy a home is the lowest since 1982.

If you own a house and have no plans to move, you might not care, or you might even enjoy your home rising in value. But for buyers, this matters more than gasoline or food prices: A home affects decisions about marriage, children, career and where to live.

Brian McCusker attests to that. “Gasoline and food don’t scare me: I’ll go out to eat less. I’ll buy a moped,” he told me. “Housing is that one thing a lot of people view as the American dream…That first house proves a lot about you as an American adult.” So it bothers him that at age 33, with a master’s degree in school counseling with a concentration in children and family-based therapy, he’s back at home, living with his parents. “My grandparents and my parents both had houses at my age,” he said.

Less than 1% of households in any given month will buy a house. But 17% plan to buy a home in the next 12 months, and add to that the millions like McCusker who want to buy their first house or trade up but can’t afford to. They have all seen their hopes wilt.

As of yet, this hasn’t made a dent in homeownership rates, which are higher among almost all age groups than before the pandemic, according to the Census Bureau.

But homeownership will probably fall if it remains this unaffordable. John Burns, chief executive of John Burns Research and Consulting, says it will take some combination of falling mortgage rates, lower prices and rising incomes for affordability to return to normal, but, absent a recession, that will take years.

Mortgage rates have dropped with easing inflation, but they aren’t headed to prepandemic levels, given upward pressure from structural forces such as global supply shocks and budget deficits. Burns said home prices are likely to flatten out but not fall next year. His home-builder clients see single-family housing starts rising 17%, to a level still lower than before the 2007-09 recession and below long-run growth in new households. Behind restrained building: financing costs, a shortage of developable land and onerous permitting.

Fixing supply constraints is a job for state and local—not federal—lawmakers. Unfortunately, local resistance to development demonstrates that while no one is rooting for high gasoline and food prices, plenty of people want home prices to stay high.


https://www.wsj.com/economy/housing...-the-worst-f12f518d?mod=wsjhp_columnists_pos3
 
That a really shitty economy, the worst since at least Carter, is getting a little less shitty isn't "good economic news." It's putting perfume on a turd.

“shitty economy,” ah, we’re you asleep during 2020, after Trump royally f*cked up the only real national crisis he ever faced
 
Inflation rates of Developed Countries, October 2023

USA 3.2%
Australia 5.4%
Canada 3.8%
France 4%
Germany 3.8%
Japan 3.0%
Italy 1.7%
South Korea 3.8%
United Kingdom 4.6%

f-9jdd6xcaaldkz-jpeg.1430759
 
Trump left office as the worst jobs President in modern history, and having helped lay the groundwork for global inflation, which started just prior to Biden actually being inaugurated.

Trump was an economic disaster as President. Considering what he inherited - Biden hasn't done too bad.

That's rather disingenuous. A near nationwide shutdown of the economy for Chinese Disease, with the high population blue (Democrat run) states like California and New York leading the way, resulted in a huge temporary drop in employment. But you ignore that and then use it as the focus of your statement. That is nothing but cherry-picking evidence.
 
That a really shitty economy, the worst since at least Carter, is getting a little less shitty isn't "good economic news." It's putting perfume on a turd.

Uh, Bush II had it worse than Carter by the end of his 8 years. It takes a little time for a president to affect the economy. We were in recession by the end of the Trump years.
 
That's rather disingenuous. A near nationwide shutdown of the economy for Chinese Disease, with the high population blue (Democrat run) states like California and New York leading the way, resulted in a huge temporary drop in employment. But you ignore that and then use it as the focus of your statement. That is nothing but cherry-picking evidence.

1) It's not diingenuous
2) The President is the steward of the American economy
3) Trump botched the handling of the pandemic, at every stage

All you're saying is that Trump was a President who could do well with no adversity, but folds whenever there is a crisis. Who wants a leader like that?

Regardless, the economy is miles better now, by most of the measures we use to gauge that.
 
Really good article on inflation and consumer confidence (and why the latter is lowering even as economic data is picking up).




While All Inflation Feels Bad, Housing Inflation Is the Worst

For some, unaffordable homes undercut the American dream even more than high gasoline and food prices


Two weeks ago, I asked why Americans were in such a rotten mood when the data said the economy is in such good shape. The disconnect has only grown since. Inflation, we just learned, eased in October, extending a two-week rally in stocks and bonds. And yet the University of Michigan’s index of consumer sentiment keeps falling.

It’s clear readers cared less about inflation dropping, which only meant prices were rising more slowly, than about the fact that the level of prices is painfully high compared with three years ago.

It is also clear that not all inflation is equal. Three things in particular have our attention: gasoline, food and houses.

Gasoline and groceries are a big part of your budget, and you buy them every week, so you notice when the price goes up—and stays up. Their prices have also risen especially steeply: 43% and 20%, respectively, since January 2021, versus 15% for the consumer-price index excluding food and energy.

This helps explain why consumer sentiment is lower than unemployment and inflation would predict. Specific prices don’t enter into the University of Michigan’s index. That said, a rising share of respondents spontaneously mention food or gas prices in the interview and they have much lower sentiment than those who don’t, Joanne Hsu, director of the university’s survey, said. That jibes with my anecdotal evidence. “Obviously, you don’t do much grocery shopping or have a car that uses gasoline,” was one reader’s quite typical reaction to my column.

The good news is, gasoline is down about a third since its mid-2022 peak. Grocery prices haven’t fallen, but they are only up 2% in the past year; dairy, eggs, chicken and meat are flat. Even if they don’t drop, maybe a long spell of not going up will loosen their grip on our psyche.

Housing is an entirely different matter. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, which compiles the CPI, doesn’t measure the cost of homeownership with home prices. Rather, it estimates what a homeowner would pay to rent their own house. This “owners’ equivalent rent” tends to track rents rather than houses and is up 17% since the start of 2021.

But if you’re actually in the market, what matters is the price of a home and the mortgage rate. Since January 2021, home prices, despite a late 2022 dip, have risen 29%, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller national home price index, and mortgage rates have nearly tripled. The buyer of the typical home thus faces a monthly principal and interest payment of nearly $2,200, more than double the level of early 2021, the National Association of Realtors calculates. No wonder the net share of consumers telling the University of Michigan it is a good time to buy a home is the lowest since 1982.

If you own a house and have no plans to move, you might not care, or you might even enjoy your home rising in value. But for buyers, this matters more than gasoline or food prices: A home affects decisions about marriage, children, career and where to live.

Brian McCusker attests to that. “Gasoline and food don’t scare me: I’ll go out to eat less. I’ll buy a moped,” he told me. “Housing is that one thing a lot of people view as the American dream…That first house proves a lot about you as an American adult.” So it bothers him that at age 33, with a master’s degree in school counseling with a concentration in children and family-based therapy, he’s back at home, living with his parents. “My grandparents and my parents both had houses at my age,” he said.

Less than 1% of households in any given month will buy a house. But 17% plan to buy a home in the next 12 months, and add to that the millions like McCusker who want to buy their first house or trade up but can’t afford to. They have all seen their hopes wilt.

As of yet, this hasn’t made a dent in homeownership rates, which are higher among almost all age groups than before the pandemic, according to the Census Bureau.

But homeownership will probably fall if it remains this unaffordable. John Burns, chief executive of John Burns Research and Consulting, says it will take some combination of falling mortgage rates, lower prices and rising incomes for affordability to return to normal, but, absent a recession, that will take years.

Mortgage rates have dropped with easing inflation, but they aren’t headed to prepandemic levels, given upward pressure from structural forces such as global supply shocks and budget deficits. Burns said home prices are likely to flatten out but not fall next year. His home-builder clients see single-family housing starts rising 17%, to a level still lower than before the 2007-09 recession and below long-run growth in new households. Behind restrained building: financing costs, a shortage of developable land and onerous permitting.

Fixing supply constraints is a job for state and local—not federal—lawmakers. Unfortunately, local resistance to development demonstrates that while no one is rooting for high gasoline and food prices, plenty of people want home prices to stay high.


https://www.wsj.com/economy/housing...-the-worst-f12f518d?mod=wsjhp_columnists_pos3

My house is up 350% in 12 years.
 
My house is up 350% in 12 years.

That's great for you (and other home owners who have experienced similar) but not so great for those trying to get into the market. Hence why so many people are unhappy and consumer confidence is dropping.
 
What IS disingenuous is claiming that Biden is responsible for GLOBAL inflation that started the month he took office.

Conditions for inflation are often years in the making.
 
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