Skip to main content

Is This the Beginning of Increased Inflation?


Producer prices surge 

The Producer Price Index (PPI) for final demand jumped 1.0% in March, the second most since December 2009, and double the consensus of 0.5%. Nearly 60% of the increase was attributed to a 1.7% surge in the goods PPI, the most on record, led by energy. 

The services PPI advanced 0.7%, its third consecutive gain, led by machinery and vehicle wholesale margins. PPI for final demand ex-energy and food was up 0.7%, also the second most on record, and exceeding the consensus of 0.2%. 

On a year-to-year basis, the PPI for final demand increased 4.2%, the fastest pace since September 2011, while core PPI was up 3.1%, a record jump. Both goods and services producer prices surged from a year ago. The broad-based increase reflects rising demand amid ongoing supply chain challenges that are creating shortages and bottlenecks. Indeed, intermediate prices soared across the production flow, suggesting a significant buildup in pipeline pressures. Some of these pressures will be transitory and should subside as supply chains improve and trade flows normalize. But it will take more than a couple of months for this to resolve. 

The base effect in calculating PPI year-to-year changes in March was negligible, as the lockdowns last year did not depress prices until April and May. As a result, PPI inflation will exceed 5.5% year-to-year in April. 

The PPI for final demand personal consumption, which correlates strongly with the CPI, surged 3.8% year-to-year, also the most since September 2011, and implies a jump in consumer price inflation, when the report is released next week.

Ken Moraif of Retirement Planners of America discusses inflation and the Fed in this video: 



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Thanks for the comment. Will get back to you as soon as convenient, if necessary.

Popular posts from this blog

California: A Model for the Rest of the Country, Part 2

Part 1 here . On Leaving the Golden State Guest Post by NicklethroweR . Posted on the Burning Platform. The fabled Ventura Highway is all that separates my artist loft from the beach where surfing first came to the United States. Both my balcony and front patio face the freeway at about eye level and I could easily smack a tennis ball right on to the ever busy 101. Access to the beach and boardwalk is very important to a Tourist Town such as mine and I can see one underpass from my balcony and another underpass from the patio. Further up the street are two pedestrian bridges. Both have been recently remodeled so that people can not use it to kill themselves by leaping down into traffic. The traffic, just like the spice, must flow and the elites that live here do not like to be inconvenienced as they dart about between Malibu and Santa Barbara. Another feature of living where I live would have to be the homeless, the insane and the drug addicts that wander this particular...
Post a Comment
Read more

Factfulness: Ignorance about global trends. The world is actually getting better.

This newsletter was powered by  Thinkr , a smart reading app for the busy-but-curious. For full access to hundreds of titles — including audio — go premium and download the app today. From the layman to the elite, there is widespread ignorance about global trends. Author and international health professor, Hans Rosling, calls Factfulness  “his very last battle in [his] lifelong mission to fight devastating global ignorance.” After years of trying to convince the world that all development indicators point to vast improvements on a global scale, Rosling digs deeper to explore why people systematically have a negative view of where humanity is heading. He identifies a number of deeply human tendencies that predispose us to believe the worst. For every instinct that he names, he offers some rules of thumb for replacing this overdramatic worldview with a “factful” one. In 2017, 20,000 people across fourteen countries were given a multiple-choice quiz to assess basic global literac...
Post a Comment
Read more

Proper way to calculate CAGR using T-Sql for SQL Server

After reading (and attempting the solutions offered in some) several articles about SQL and CAGR,  I have reached the conclusion that none of them would stand testing in a real-world environment. For one thing, the SQL queries offered as examples are overly complex or don't use the correct math for calculating proper CAGR. Since most DBAs don't have an MBA or Finance degree, let me help.  The correct equation for calculating Compound Annual Growth Rate (as a percentage) is:  Some key points about CAGR:  The compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) is one of the most accurate ways to calculate and determine returns for anything that can rise or fall in value over time. Investors can compare the CAGR of two alternatives to evaluate how well one stock performed against other stocks in a peer group or a market index. The CAGR does not reflect investment risk. You can read a full article about CAGR  here .  To calculate the CAGR for an investment in a language like ...
Post a Comment
Read more