The #FederalReserve left #InterestRates unchanged on Wednesday & signaled only one cut by the end of the year. Earlier, #inflation data for May came in cooler than expected.
John Deere reported a profit of over $10bn in fiscal year 2023 and its CEO John May received $26.7m in total compensation. John Deere spent over $7.2bn on stock buybacks in 2023 and provided shareholders with more than $1.4bn in dividends.
Just quit blaming Biden for #inflation & call it what it is — corporate greed. #corporategreed
#Inflation soared under President #Biden in 2021 & 2022, as the #economy emerged from the #pandemic recession [that began under Trump]. Its causes were complex, including snarled #SupplyChains, stimulative policies by the #FederalReserve &, to a degree, federal fiscal policies incl’ing #Covid relief bills signed by #Trump &…Biden.
With a word to the wise:
"any time a company gives you a hard-sell to order via its apps rather than its storefronts or its website, you should assume you're getting twiddled, hard."
Today in Labor History June 2, 1780: The Gordon Riots began on this date in England and lasted through June 9. The riots began as a pogrom against Catholics. However, it grew into a mass worker insurrection that included ex-slaves, impressed sailors and debtors, English, Irish, Italians, Germans and Jews. The insurrectionists liberated two thousand prisoners and destroyed every major prison in London. They wrote on the prison walls, “Freed by the Authority of His Majesty, King Mob." Rioters also destroyed the homes members of the ruling elite, as well as toll houses and the Bank of England. The rich fled the city in terror. It was the most destructive protest in the history of London. The military was called in. They slaughtered up to 700 workers. The political context for the insurrection included low wages and inflation due to England’s wars with the U.S., Spain and France, as well as the desire for universal suffrage.
"Speeding up the move to #CleanEnergy technologies improves the affordability of energy and can relieve pressures on the #CostOfLiving more broadly, according to a new IEA special report released today.
Key task for governments is to make clean energy technologies more accessible to those that may otherwise struggle with the upfront costs, new IEA special report finds."
An inflationary spiral based on expectations. It is a very different one from a deflationary one.
In the case of supply chain disruption (think floods and drought) it's a supply shock and at best businesses have to scramble to adapt (invest etc) to get around the problem. But hammering COL demand is perverse.
In all cases, messing around with interest rates is largely an exercise in futility.
#US#economy grew at 1.6% annual rate in first quarter 2024, a sharp slowdown
“Growth is slowing, but clearly the economy is still on a solid path,” said Ben Ayers, snr economist at Nationwide, which recently scrapped its recession forecast for the year. “We’ve had very strong #job growth that’s fueling higher incomes, giving people the #money to go out & spend. But that’s also kept #inflation high, so honestly a little bit of cooling is good news.”
“Even if evidence indicated #theFed capable of such precision (evidence does not), Joseph C. Sternberg’s question in the WSJ is apposite: ‘Who elected these folks to aim for a 50% loss in purchasing power of a #dollar every 35yrs?’
“In a recent rpt, the Manhattan Inst’s Dan Katz & Stephen Miran argue that ‘the Fed’s current governance has facilitated #groupthink that has led to significant #monetary#policy errors
“‘while allowing #theFed the flexibility to unwisely expand its remit into inherently #political areas such as #credit rationing & #banking#regulation.’ Here is #groupthink: ‘Despite the biggest #monetary errors in 4 decades,’ Katz & Miran write, none of the 9 recent appointees to the Board of Governors was on record as having made accurate predictions about #inflation’s path.
“#MissionCreep: #TheFed has moved beyond its traditional technocratic role & ‘pursued a much more expansive #monetary & #regulatory agenda that is more consistent w/an explicitly #political institution.’”
If #Trump is allowed back in the #WhiteHouse, he and his team of pariahs and lunatics are planning to devalue the Dollar in some insane and misguided effort to boost American exports. But the move would send the US #inflation rate through the roof, and destabilize the #globalEconomy. It's a plan supported by #PeterNavarro, so you know it's the exact wrong thing to do. Please consider the damage a Trump presidency would do, and commit to #VoteBlue.
You'll be seeing quite a lot of coverage saying that wage 'growth' is continuing to top 5% & the BoE will be factoring this into decision making around interest rates - those pesky workers pushing up their wages....
But on the chart below, ignore the dark blue & pink lines which are the nominal wages of the headlines & focus on the light blue & green lines which are for 'real' wages (i.e. after [!!] inflation).
As we can see workers relative impoverishment continues...
Robert Reich, Heather Lofthouse, and Michael Pollan talk about why food prices are so high. Their conclusion:
Supply-chain interruptions in the pandemic resulted in higher prices. Then when those interruptions were gone, the food industry kept the prices high to generate profit that goes to top execs, and with a small number of players controlling all of this, there's little incentive to lower prices.
Hmmm.... so while the BoE attempts to convince us they can control inflation by the use of interest rates, we find a new inflationary threat coming, not from UK workers, or even our trade relations, but rather from an uptick in US inflation.
As a result market forecasters now think the BoE will not be able (even they wished to) reduce interest rates until later in the year...
But hold on, surely the BoE keeps telling us inflation is a domestic phenomenon - greedy workers etc.!
The global #economy faces a decade of “tepid growth” and “popular discontent” despite avoiding a much-feared recession, the #IMF’s managing director Kristalina Georgieva has warned.
"Skyrocketing #insurance premiums were also one of the biggest contributors to #inflation over the past 12 months, rising 16.4 per cent according to the latest ABS figures."
"We desperately need to avoid a scenario where insurance is not sustainable and insurers are pulling back."