For some reason (that Trump says is Biden's fault) inflation has jumped up to 3% in January, its HIGHEST rate in 6 months. This has been driven by sky-high prices for eggs and energy, the US treasury keeping high interest rates, and of course, all the economic anxiety Trump has instilled with his tariff talks. Economists were expecting Wednesday’s report to be fairly unexciting, with barely any change from December’s data.
For someone who made making the (already great) economy better, he sure is doing a terrible job. Grocery prices climbed 0.5% over the month, compared with 0.3% in December, as egg prices surged more than 15% amid shortages caused by outbreak of the avian flu.
Egg prices, which are up 53% year over year, shot up 15.2% from December to January. That’s the biggest monthly increase that index has seen since June 2015 during the last avian flu outbreak.
That marked the biggest monthly increase in nearly a decade, the Labor Department said.
Prices for clothing, by contrast, declined, while rents and other housing-related costs increased 4.4% over the last year, marking the smallest 12-month increase since January 2022. Core inflation, which strips out food and energy and is seen by analysts as a better measure of underlying trends, was 0.4% over the month, the fastest pace since March. On Wednesday, Trump called on the Fed to lower interest rates to go "hand-in-hand" with tariffs.
However, some analysts said after the report that they were no longer expecting any rate cuts this year.
Wednesday morning, the major stock indexes in the US opened lower, while interest rates charged on US government debt climbed higher. The Dow was around 395 points lower at the opening bell, with the S&P 500 down 1% and the Nasdaq Composite declining by 1.1%.
Of course they blame it on Biden. Bunch of crooks!