And now, 4 months later, it has suddenly spiked to $1.47.
I know that you, or @xerty had a question/issue/problem regarding my story of generic/housebrand potato chips at Food Lion. However many months or years itâs been, I can confirm that the house brand potato chips at Food Lion have gone from 79â” (2019 price) to $1.59. At Walmart the family (fat guy) size has gone from 1.55 to 2.19 during the last 18 months.
I rarely eat potato chips, but will be eating them MUCH less frequently after these outrageous price hikes. I will, once again, grow my own potatoes in croker sacks and enjoy the amazing goodness of freshly dug, washed, steamed, and buttered potatoes. 
Current markets estimating 2:1 odds for 75bp hike vs 50bp hike for Sept.
- FED FUNDS FUTURES SHOW ODDS OF 75 BPS RATE HIKE IN SEPTEMBER NOW AT 70.5%
and then another 50bp expected for Nov, bringing rates to high 3%âs.
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These rates are going to continue for a long time. Powell learned a lesson from the 1970s when the Fed would back off their interest rates at the slightest sign of decreasing inflation only to have it come roaring back.
I wish. I think we will start calling him linguine spine within a year.
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Energy prices - artificially low, but not forever?
The world enjoyed a multi-year period of high energy abundance, due to the sharp rise of unprofitable shale oil on top of supply/demand situation that was otherwise rather balanced, and this resulted in a significant period of oversupply. A lot of analysts view that as being the normal that we will return to, when in many ways it was anything but normal.
Instead, most of my analysis over the past couple years has pointed to that supply glut being over. OPEC likely doesnât have a ton of spare capacity and North American shale producers have already tapped into a lot of the easy deposits, and are now operating in a more disciplined manner with an emphasis on positive free cash flow.
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Student loan inflation
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economists who track federal spending and workforce issues panned Bidenâs plan as offering unnecessary aid to many graduates who are financially well-off, potentially stoking inflation and running up deficits as borrowing costs rise.
They also said the move was puzzling just after the administration worked to bring down deficits in the newly signed âInflation Reduction Actâ with a 15% minimum corporate tax and new enforcement funding for the Internal Revenue Service.
The about-face just a week later âis bad economic policy,â said Alan Auerbach, a public finance economist at the University of California, Berkeley. âTo switch from saying âweâre doing this in a responsible mannerâ to turning around and blowing all the money they saved and more, from a policy perspective, it makes no sense.â
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Itâs almost like Biden doesnât care about inflation and his policies are all about vote buying.
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This Fed guy is drinking the Biden âtransitionâ Kool-aid.
- FEDâS BARKIN: WE ARE NOT TODAY IN A RECESSION
- FEDâS BARKIN: I DONâT EXPECT INFLATION TO COME DOWN PREDICTABLY
- FEDâS BARKIN: US IS FACED WITH A POST-WAR-LIKE INFLATION.
- FEDâS BARKIN: RECESSION IS A RISK OF US GETTING INFLATION BACK DOWN TO 2%
- FEDâS BARKIN: A RECESSION DOES NOT HAVE TO BE CALAMITOUS
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I havenât heard a good explanation of this from anyone yet so I guess Iâll ask here. How exactly can Biden pull this off without congress? I know that with the filibuster, congress essentially canât pass legislation unless it is bipartisan. EXCEPT when it can go through reconciliation - so only spending bills can be passed on a party line vote IF they are budget neutral. There are all sorts of tricks to make things budget neutral, for example, adding billions to the IRS budget and claiming that will net us hundreds of billions more in revenue via more audits, but at least there has to be some semblance of how spending is paid for when employing reconciliation.
With this, it is essentially the department of education - an agency with a $188 billion budget, spending an additional $300 billion all at once with no corresponding $300 billion in revenue. How exactly is this possible? I know some people are talking about how no one has standing to sue over this because a taxpayer canât just sue because he thinks his money is being misspent. But how can an agencyâs budget triple overnight without congress actually appropriating the money? The HEROs act passed years ago didnât appropriate $300 billion, did it?
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This is a ploy to buy votes in the midterm by turning out his voters. Even if the courts shut it down it will not happen before the election.
The main legal issue seems to be standing. The chief justice Roberts era courts love to weasel out of making decisions through technicalities.
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With this, it is essentially the department of education - an agency with a $188 billion budget, spending an additional $300 billion all at once with no corresponding $300 billion in revenue.
It is probably more accurate to frame it as them âspendingâ that $300 billion over the length of time that those specific loans would have been repaid.
An EU perspective on their energy markets and how their politicians have been screwing things up.
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If you want to buy into the propaganda, those poor victimized students are never going to be able to repay the loans anyways, so this loan forgiveness is actually costing the government nothing. Maybe less than nothing, if you include in the equation all the future accrued interest thatâll no longer accrue.
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He shouldnât be able to and the Dems know it.
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Thatâs a pretty shocking article to see from Reuters. I wonder how long it will be before they pull it. 
Of course, they had to throw a little bit of bull to make it fair and balanced.
Please explain how you can increase the budget, increase taxes, bring down deficits, and decrease inflation? Hey, Joe, want to give it a go?
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https://finance.yahoo.com/news/powell-abandons-soft-landing-goal-090000286.html
Forget about a soft landing. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell is now aiming for something much more painful for the economy to put an end to elevated inflation. The trouble is, even that may not be enough.
Powell âburied the concept of a soft landingâ with his Aug. 26 speech in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, said Diane Swonk, chief economist at KPMG LLP. Now, âthe Fedâs goal is to grind inflation down by slowing growth below its potential,â which officials peg at 1.8%.
The shift in Powellâs message got the attention of Wall Street. Stock prices have swooned since the Fed chair vowed to do what it takes to rid the economy of too-high inflation.
Powell has seemingly concluded that it will take a tiger â and not just a soft landing â to attack Americaâs pernicious inflation. In his Jackson Hole speech, he said the labor market was âclearly out of balance,â with the demand for workers substantially exceeding the supply. Thatâs led to rapid wage rises that are incompatible with the Fedâs 2% inflation target.
Note:
This piece is from Bloomberg. The link provided gets you around the Bloomberg paywall.
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A measly 4% fed rate will not stop inflation with the ocean of money sloshing around the system- both here in the United States and in Europe. And the Democrats keep pouring more spending into the system.
Also the climate cult is in full command of the leftists that control the governments both here and in Europe. That has led to the huge increase in energy prices in Europe and will continue with the increase here in the United States after the November election.
The question is how do we as individuals cope with this?
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Speech is cheap. Unless youâre a conservative speaking on FAcebook, Twitter, blah, blah.
Oy! My goal is to run 5 minute mile. So what? How did officials define our growth potential at 1.8%?
While I hope that Powellâs âboldâ statements somehow make it into his backbone, I have very large doubts. Letâs see how inflation takes a back seat to the economy in the first half of '23.
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At Walmart.com:
Musselmanâs unsweetened applesauce - 46 oz.
Price mid-July of 2021: $2.93 (purchased at that time)
Price today: $5.02 (not purchased at this new price)
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